\ 

^  0<e¥«>g  ©rfW*^,,,  e<»«>9  -*>  ©<5^^30^>*^  ^  r  ,^S^^  ^  ' 

I  TlIECLtGICAL  £Ejk...AIiy.  1 3 

Prinoetcn,  I'T.  J. 


4jiO    .H35  TS45  Casse^ 
.mlton,  James,  1814-1867. 
•fe  in  earnest,  or, 
Christian  activity  and 


.If 


UtJ!.-^  CSkHL^lciT^ 


■€uvl  '\i 


■^  LIFE  IN  EARNEST; 


OR, 


CHRISTIAN  ACTIVITY  AND  ARDOUR 


ILLUSTRATED    AND    COMMENDED. 


NOT  SLOTHFTL  IN  BTTSIXESSJ 
FERVINT  IN  SPIBIT; 
8KBVING  THE   LORD. 


Rom.  xii.  11, 


f  C\  X^\JL 


EBVISED  BY  THE  COMMITTEE  OF  PUBLICATION. 


PHILADELPHIA  : 
AMERICAN  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  UNION, 

NO.  146    CHESTNUT   STREET, 


Entered  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  tlie  year  1845,  by 
the  American  Sunday-school  Union,  in  the  clerk's  office  of  the 
District  Court  of  the  Eastern  District  of  Pennsylvania. 


NOTE. 

To  "  live  in  earnest"  is  to  live  with  ha- 
bitual reference  to  the  great  end  of  life. 
It  is  to  make  the  life  that  now  is,  with  all 
its  relations  and  obligations,  not  only  en- 
tirely subordinate  to  the  life  that  is  to  come, 
but  directly  and  in  the  highest  degree  con- 
ducive to  the  glory  and  happiness  of  the 
soul  in  that  coming  life.  It  is  to  seek  with 
intense,  agonizing  effort  the  glory  of  God, 
and  the  bliss  of  dwelling  in  his  presence 
eternally. 

The  motives  to  Christian  activity  and 
ardour  are  presented  and  enforced  in  a  very 
original  and  impressive  manner,  in  a  volume 
lately  published  in  London,  entitled  "  Life 
in  Earnest :  Six  Lectures  on  Christian  Ac- 
tivity and  Ardour,  by  the  Rev.  James  Ham- 
ilton, National  Scotch  Church,  Regent 
Square,"  (London.)  They  were  delivered, 
as  part  of  a  course  of  lectures  on  the  epis- 
tle to  the  Romans,  in  the  autumn  of  1844. 
In  the  preface  to  the  English  edition,  dated 

3 


NOTE. 


Jan.  7,  1845,  the  author  says: — "  As  all 
my  elTorts  cannot  secure  that  amount  of 
pastoral  intercourse  for  which  I  long,  I  felt 
desirous  of  sending  to  your  several  homes 
a  word  in  season,  at  the  opening  of  this 
year;  and  as  an  appropriate  remembrance 
at  such  a  time,  I  have  selected  the  follow- 
ing familiar  lectures.  You  now  receive 
them  in  nearly  the  same  homely  guise  in 
which  you  first  made  their  acquaintance  a 
few  Sabbaths  ago." 

The  American  Sunday-school  Union  issue 
this  first  *American  edition,  (in  which  the 
substance  of  the  original  work  is  embraced,) 
in  the  hope  that  not  only  Sunday-school 
teachers,  (in  whose  success  the  society  is 
specially  interested,)  but  ministers  of  the 
gospel  and  private  Christians  also,  will  be 
excited  by  it  to  more  diligence  in  business, 
more  fervency  of  spirit,  and  more  cheerful 
and  zealous  service  in  the  cause  of  our 
divine  Master. 

*  At  the  time  of  putting  this  edition  in  type,  the  com- 
mittee had  no  intimation  that  any  other  American  edi- 
tion was  published  or  contemplated. 


CONTENTS. 

Page 
Chapteii  I. — Industry 7 

II. — Industry 25 

III. — An  Eye  to  the  Lord  Jesus 45 

IV.— A  fervent  Spirit 63 

v.— The  Threefold  Cord 82 

VI. — A  word  to  each  and  to  all — Con- 
clusion     103 


1* 


LIFE  IN  EARNEST. 

CHAPTER  I. 

INDUSTRY. 

"  Not  slothful  in  business.^^ 

Two  things  are  very  certain, — that  we  have 
all  got  a  work  to  do,  and  are  all,  more  or 
less,  indisposed  to  do  it.  In  oiher  words, 
every  man  has  a  calling,  and  most  men  have 
a  greater  or  less  amount  of  indolence,  -which 
disinclines  them  for  the  work  of  that  calling. 
Many  men  would  have  liked  the  gospel  all 
the  better,  if  it  had  entirely  repealed  the 
sentence,  "  In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt 
thou  eat  thy  bread ;"  had  it  proclaimed 
a  final  emancipation  from  industry  and 
turned  our  world  into  a  merry  play-ground 
or  luxurious  dormitory.  But  this  is  not  what 
the  gospel  does.  It  does  not  abolish  labour  ; 
it  gives  it  a  new  and  a  nobler  aspect.  The 
gospel  abolishes  labour  much  in  the  same  way 

7 


8  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

as  it  abolishes  death  ;  it  leaves  the  thing,  but 
changes  its  nature.  The  gospel  sweetens  the 
beUever's  work  :  it  gives  him  new  motives  for 
performing  it.  The  gospel  dignifies  toil :  it 
transforms  it  from  the  drudgery  of  the  work- 
house or  the  penitentiary,  to  the  affectionate 
offices  and  joyful  services  of  the  fire-side  and 
the  family  circle.  It  asks  us  to  do  for  the 
sake  of  Christ  many  things  which  we  were 
once  compelled  to  bear  as  a  portion  of  the 
curse,  and  which  worldly  men  perform  for 
selfish  and  secondary  reasons.  "  Whatsoever 
ye  do  in  word  or  deed,  do  all  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord  Jesus.  Wives,  submit  yourselves 
unto  your  own  husbands,  as  it  is  fit  in  the 
Lord.  Children,  obey  your  parents  in  all 
things,  for  this  is  well  pleasing  unto  the 
Lord.  Servants,  obey  in  all  things  your 
masters  according  to  the  flesh,  not  with  eye- 
service,  as  men-pleasers,  but  in  singleness  of 
heart,  fearing  God  ;  and  whatsoever  ye  do, 
do  it  heartily  as  to  the  Lord  and  not  unto 
men,  knowing  that  of  the  Lord  ye  shall  re- 
ceive the  reward  of  the  inheritance,  for  yc 
serve  the  Lord  Christ."  The  gospel  has  not 
superseded   dihgence.     "  Study   to   be   quiet 


INDUSTRY.  9 

and  to  do  your  own  business,  and  to  work 
with  your  own  hands,  as  we  commanded  you. 
If  any  man  will  not  work,  neither  let  him 
eat."  It  is  mentioned  as  almost  the  climax 
of  sin,  "  And  withal  they  learn  to  be  idle, 
wandering  about  from  house  to  house  ;  and 
not  only  idle,  but  tattlers  also,  and  busy- 
bodies,  speaking-  things  which  they  ought 
not  :"  as,  on  the  other  hand,  the  healthy  and 
right-conditioned  state  of  a  soul  is,  "  Not  sloth- 
ful in  business,  fervent  in  spirit,  serving  the 
Lord." 

I.  This  precept  is  violaled  by  those  who 
have  no  business  at  all.  By  the  bounty  of 
God's  providence,  some  are  in  such  a  situa- 
tion, that  they  do  not  need  to  toil  for  a  sub- 
sistence ;  they  go  to  bed  when  they  please, 
and  get  up  when  they  can  sleep  no  longer, 
and  they  do  with  themselves  whatever  they 
hke  ;  and  though  we  dare  not  say  that  their's 
is  the  happiest  life,  it  certainly  seems  to  be 
the  easiest.  But  it  w^ill  neither  be  a  lawful 
life  nor  a  happy  one,  unless  it  have  some  work 
in  hand,  some  end  in  view.  Those  of  you 
who  are  familiar  with  the  shore,  may  have  seen, 
attached   to  the    inundated   reef,  a  creature, 


10  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

(wht4lier  a  plant  or  animal  you  could  scarcely 
tell,)  rooted  to  the  rock  as  a  plant  might  be, 
and  twirling  its  long  tentacula  as  an  animal 
would  do.  This  plant-animal's  life  is  somewhat 
monotonous,  for  it  has  nothing  to  do  but 
grow  and  twirl  its  feelers,  float  in  the  tide, 
or  fold  itself  up  on  its  foot-stalk  when  that 
tide  has  receded,  for  months  and  years  to- 
gether. Now,  would  it  not  be  very  dismal 
to  be  transformed  into  a  zoophyte  ?  Would 
it  not  be  an  awful  punishment,  with  your 
human  soul  still  in  you,  to  be  anchored  to  a 
rock,  able  to  do  nothing  but  spin  about  your 
arms  or  fold  them  up  again,  and  knowing  no 
variety,  except  when  the  receding  ocean  left 
you  in  the  daylight,  or  the  returning  waters 
plunged  you  into  the  green  depths  again,  or 
the  sweeping  tide  brought  you  the  prize  of  a 
young  periwinkle  or  an  invisible  star-fish  ?  But 
what  better  is  the  life  you  are  spontaneously 
leading  ?  What  greater  variet}'-  marks  your 
existence,  than  chequers  the  hfe  of  the  sea- 
anemone  ?  Does  not  one  day  float  over  you 
after  another,  just  as  the  tide  floats  over  it, 
and  find  you  much  the  same,  and  leave  you 
vegetating   still  ?      Are    you    more    useful  ? 


INDUSTRY.  1 1 

What  real  service  to  others  did  you  render 
yesterday  ?  What  tangible  amount  of  occu- 
pation did  you  overtake  in  the  1G8  hours 
of  which  last  week  consisted  ?  And  what 
higher  end  in  hving  have  you  than  that  po- 
lypus ?  You  go  through  certain  mechanical 
routines  of  rising,  and  dressing,  and  visiting, 
and  dining,  and  going  to  sleep  again  ;  and 
are  a  little  roused  from  your  usual  lethargy 
by  the  arrival  of  a  friend,  or  the  effort  needed 
to  write  some  note  of  ceremony.  But  as  it 
curtseys  in  the  waves,  and  vibrates  its  ex- 
ploring arms,  and  gorges  some  dainty  me- 
dusa, the  sea-anemone  goes  through  nearly 
the  same  round  of  pursuits  and  enjoyments 
with  your  intelligent  and  immortal  self.  Is 
this  a  hfe  for  a  rational  and  responsible  crea- 
ture to  lead  ? 

11.  But  this  precept  is  also  violated  by 
those  who  are  diligent  in  trifles, — whose 
activity  is  a  busy  idleness.  You  may  be 
very  earnest  in  a  pursuit  which  is  utterly 
beneath  your  prerogative  as  an  intelligent 
creature,  and  your  high  destination  as  an 
immortal  being.  Pursuits  which  are  per- 
ftctly  proper  in  creatures  destitute  of  reason 


13  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

may  be  very  culpable  in  those  who  not  only 
have  reason,  but  are  capable  of  enjoyments 
above  the  range  of  reason  itself.  We  just 
now  imagined  a  man  retaining  all  his  con- 
sciousness transformed  into  a  zoophyte.  Let 
us  imagine  another  similar  transformation. 
Fancy  that  instead  of  a  polypus  you  were 
changed  into  a  swallow.  There  you  have  a 
creature  abundantly  busy,  up  in  the  early 
morning,  for  ever  on  the  wing,  as  graceful 
and  sprightly  in  his  flight  as  he  is  tasteful  in 
the  haunts  which  he  selects.  Look  at  him, 
zigzagging  over  the  clover  field,  skimming  the 
limpid  lake,  whisking  round  the  steeple,  or 
dancing  gayly  in  the  sky.  Behold  him  in 
high  spirits,  shrieking  out  his  ecstasy  as  he 
has  bolted  a  dragon-fly,  or  darted  through 
the  arrow-slits  of  the  old  turret,  or  per- 
formed some  other  feat  of  hirundine  agility. 
And  notice  how  he  pays  his  morning  visits, 
alighting  elegantly  on  some  house-top,  and 
twittering  pohtely  by  turns  to  the  swallow 
on  either  side  of  him,  and  after  five  minutes' 
conversation,  ofl"  and  away  to  call  for  his  friend 
at  the  castle.  And  now  he  is  gone  upon  his 
travels,  gone  to  spend  the  winter  at  Rome  or 


INDUSTRY.  18 

Naples,  to  visit  Egj^pt  or  the  Holy  Land, 
or  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Spain  or  the  coast 
of  Barbary.  And  when  he  comes  home 
next  April,  sure  enough  he  has  been  abroad ; 
— charming  chmate, — liighly  delighted  with 
the  cicadas  in  Italy,  and  the  bees  on  Hy- 
mettus ; — locusts  in  Africa  rather  scarce  this 
season ;  but  upon  the  whole  much  pleased 
with  his  trip,  and  returned  in  high  health 
and  spirits.  Now,  this  is  a  very  proper  hfe 
for  a  swallow,  but  is  it  a  Hfe  for  you  ?  To 
flit  about  from  house  to  house ;  to  pay  futile 
visits,  where,  if  the  talk  were  written  down, 
it  would  amount  to  little  more  than  the  chat- 
tering of  a  swallow  ;  to  bestow  all  your 
thoughts  on  graceful  attitudes  and  nimble 
movements  and  pohshed  attire ;  to  roam 
from  land  to  land  with  so  little  information 
in  your  head,  or  so  little  taste  for  the  subUme 
or  beautiful  in  your  soul,  that  could  a  swallow 
pubhsh  his  travels,  and  did  you  publish 
yours,  we  should  probably  find  the  one  a 
counterpart  of  the  other;  the  winged  tra- 
veller enlarging  on  the  discomforts  of  his 
nest,  and  the  wingless  one,  on  the  miseries 
of  his  hotel  or  his  chateau  ;  you  describing 
o 


14  LIFE    IN    TARNEST. 

tlie  places  of  amusement,  or  enlarging  on 
the  vastness  of  the  country,  and  the  abund- 
ance of  the  game  ;  and  your  rival  eloquent 
on  the  self-same  things.  Oh  !  it  is  a  thought, 
not  ridiculous,  but  appalling.  If  the  earthly 
history  of  some  of  our  fellow-creatures  were 
written  down ;  if  a  faithful  record  were  kept 
of  the  way  they  spend  their  time  ;  if  all  the 
hours  of  idle  vacancy  or  idler  occupancy  were 
put  together,  and  the  very  small  amount  of 
useful  diligence  deducted,  the  life  of  a  bird 
or  quadruped  would  be  a  nobler  one  ;  more 
worthy  of  its  powers  and  more  equal  to 
its  Creator's  end  in  forming  it.  Such  a  re- 
gister is  kept.  Though  the  trifler  does  not 
chronicle  his  own  vain  words  and  wasted 
hours,  they  chronicle  themselves.  They  find 
their  indelible  place  in  that  book  of  remem- 
brance with  which  human  hands  cannot  tam- 
per, and  from  which  no  erasure,  save  one,  can 
blot  them.  They  are  noted  in  the  memory 
of  God.  And  when  once  this  life  of  wondrous 
opportunities  and  awful  advantages  is  over — 
when  the  twenty  or  fifty  years  of  probation 
are  fled  away — when  mortal  existence,  with 
its    facihties    for   personal   improvement    and 


INDUSTRY.  16 

serviceablencss  to  others,  is  gone  beyond  re- 
cal — when  the  trifler  looks  back  to  the  long 
pilgrimage,  with  all  the  doors  of  hope  and 
doors  of  usefulness,  past  which  he  skipped  in 
his  frisky  forgetfulncss — what  anguish  will  it 
cause  to  think  that  he  has  gambolled  through 
such  a  world  without  salvation  to  himself, 
without  any  real  bcnefic  to  his  brethren,  a 
busy  trifler,  a  vivacious  idler,  a  clever  fool ! 

III.  Those  violate  this  precept,  who  have 
a  lawful  calling,  a  proper  business,  but  are 
slothful  in  it.  When  people  are  in  business 
for  themselves,  they  are  in  less  risk  of  trans- 
gressing this  injunction;  though  even  then 
it  sometimes  happens  that  the  hand  is  not 
diligent  enough  to  make  its  owner  rich.  But 
it  is,  when  engaged  in  business,  not  for  our- 
selves, but  for  others,  or  for  God,  that  we  are 
in  greatest  danger  of  neglecting  this  rule. 
The  servant,  who  has  no  pleasure  in  his  work, 
who  does  no  more  than  wages  can  buy,  or  a 
legal  agreement  enforce ;  the  shopman,  wli 
does  not  enter  heartily  into  his  employer's 
interest,  and  bestir  himself  to  extend  his 
trade  as  he  would  strive  were  the  concern  his 
own ;    the   scholar,    who    trifles    when    his 


16  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

teacher's  eye  is  elsewhere,  and  who  is  content 
if  he  can  only  learn  enough  to  escape  dis- 
grace ;  the  teacher,  who  is  satisfied  if  he  can 
only  convey  a  decent  share  of  instruction, 
and  who  does  not  labour  for  the  mental  ex- 
pansion and  spiritual  well-being  of  his  pupils, 
as  he  would  for  those  of  his  own  children; 
the  magistrate  or  civic  functionary,  who  is 
only  careful  to  escape  pubhc  censure,  and 
who  does  not  labour  to  make  the  community 
richer,  or  happier,  or  better  for  his  adminis- 
tration ;  the  minister,  who  can  give  his  ener- 
gies to  another  cause  than  the  cause  of  Christ, 
and  neglect  his  Master's  business  in  minding 
his  own;  every  one,  in  short,  who  performs 
the  work  which  God  or  his  brethren  have 
given  him  to  do  in  a  hireling  and  perfunctory 
manner,  is  a  violator  of  the  divine  injunction, 
"Not  slothful  in  business."  There  are  some 
persons  of  a  dull  and  languid  turn.  They 
trail  sluggishly  through  life,  as  if  some  pain- 
ful viscus,  some  adhesive  slime  were  clogging 
every  movement,  and  making  their  snail-path 
a  waste  of  their  very  substance.  They  do  no- 
thing with  that  healthy  alacrity,  that  gleesome 
energy  which  bespeaks  a  sound  mind  even  more 


INDUSTRY.  17 

than  a  vigorous  body;  but  tliey  drag  them- 
selves to  the  inevitable  task  with  remonstrating 
reluctance,  as  if  every  joint  were  set  in  a  socket 
of  torture,  or  as  if  they  expected  the  quick  flesh 
to  cleave  to  the  next  implement  of  industry 
they  handled.  Slaving  no  wholesome  love  to 
work,  no  joyous  delight  in  duty,  they  do  every 
thing  grudgingly,  in  the  most  superficial  man- 
ner, and  at  the  latest  moment.  Others  there 
are,  who,  if  you  find  them  at  their  post,  you 
will  find  them  dozing  at  it.  They  are  a  sort 
of  perpetual  somnambulists,  walking  through 
their  sleep ;  moving  in  a  constant  mystery ; 
looking  for  their  faculties,  and  forgetting 
what  they  are  looking  for;  not  able  to  find 
their  work,  and  when  they  have  found  their 
work  not  able  to  find  their  hands ;  doing  every 
thing  dreamily,  and  therefore  ever}^  thing  con- 
fusedly and  incompletely ;  their  work  a  dream, 
their  sleep  a  dream,  not  repose,  not  refresh- 
ment, but  a  slumbrous  vision  of  rest,  a  dreamy 
query  concerning  sleep ;  too  late  for  every 
thing,  taking  their  passage  when  the  ship 
has  sailed,  insuring  their  property  when  the 
house  is  burned,  locking  the  door  when  the 
goods  are  stolen — men,  whose  bodies  seem  to 


18  LIFE    IN   EARNEST. 

have  started  in  the  race  of  existence  before 
their  minds  were  ready,  and  who  are  alwaj^s 
gazing  out  vacantly  as  if  they  expected  their 
wits  were  coming  up  by  the  next  arrival: 
But,  besides  the  sloths  and  the  somnambulists, 
there  is  a  third  class — the  day-dreamers. 
These  are  a  very  mournful,  because  a  self- 
deceiving  generation.  Like  a  man  who  has 
his  windows  glazed  with  yellow  glass,  and 
who  can  fancy  a  golden  sunshine,  or  a  mellow 
autumn  on  the  fields  even  when  a  wintry  sleet 
is  sweeping  over  them,  the  day-dreamer 
lives  in  an  elysium  of  his  own  creating. 
With  a  foot  on  either  side  of  the  fire — with 
his  chin  on  his  bosom,  and  ihe  wrong  end  of 
the  book  turned  towards  him,  he  can  pursue 
his  self-complacent  musings  till  he  imagines 
himself  a  traveller  in  unknown  lands — the 
explorer  of  central  Africa — the  solver  of  all 
the  unsolved  problems  in  science — the  author 
of  some  unprecedented  poem  at  which  the 
wide  world  is  wondering — or  something  so 
stupendous  that  he  even  begins  to  quail 
at  his  own  glory.  The  misery  is,  that  whilst 
nothing  is  done  towards  attaining  the  great- 
ness,   his    luxurious    imaorination    takes    its 


INDFSTHY, 


t# 


possession  for  granted,  and  with  his  feet  on 
the  fender,  he  fancies  himself  already  on 
the  highest  pinnacle  of  fame ;  and  a  still 
greater  misery  is,  that  the  time  thus  wasted 
in  unprofitahie  musings,  if  spent  in  honest 
application  aad  downright  working,  would  go 
very  far  to  carry  him  M/here  his  sublime 
imagination  fain  would  be.  To  avoid  this 
guilt  and  wretchedness, 

1.  Have  a  business  in  which  diligence  is 
lawful  and  desirable.  There  are  some  pursuits 
which  do  »ot  deserve  to  be  called  a  business. 
iEropus  was  the  king  oi'  Macedonia,  and  it 
was  his  favx3urite  pursuit  t^  make  lanterns.  Pro- 
t)ably,  he  v\as  very  good  at  making  them,  but 
his  proper  busiiiess  was  to  be  a  kiug,  and 
therefore  the  more  lanterns  he  made,  the  worse 
king  he  was.  And  if  your  work  be  a  high 
calling,  you  must  not  dissipate  your  energies  on 
trifles,  on  things  which,  though  lawful  in  them- 
selves, are  still  as  irrelevant  to  you  as  lantern- 
making  is  irrelevant  to  a  king.  Perhaps 
some  are  without  any  specific  calling.  They 
have  neither  farms  nor  merchandise  to  look 
after.  They  have  no  hcu-schold  to  care  for, 
no  children  to  train  and  educate,  no  official 


20  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

duties  to  engross  their  time.  They  have  an  in- 
dependent fortune,  and  live  at  large.  I  con- 
gratulate them  on  their  wealth,  their  liberal 
education,  their  position  in  society,  and  their 
abundant  leisure.  It  is  in  their  power  to  be 
the  benefactors  of  their  generation  ;  they  are 
in  circumstances  to  do  an  eminent  service  for 
God  and  finish  some  great  work  before  their 
going  hence.  What  that  work  shall  be  I  do 
not  attempt  to  indicate ;  I  rather  leave  it  for 
their  own  investigation  and  discovery.  Every 
one  has  his  own  line  of  things.  Howard  chose 
one  path,  and  Wilberforce  another  ;  Harlan 
Page  chose  one,  and  Brainerd  Taylor  another. 
Mrs.  Fletcher  did  one  work,  Lady  Glenorchy 
another,  and  Mary  Jane  Graham  a  third. 
Every  one  did  the  work  for  which  God  had 
best  fitted  them,  but  each  made  that  work  his 
or  her  business.  They  gave  themselves  to  it ; 
they  not  only  did  it  by  the  bye,  but  they 
selected  it  and  set  themselves  in  earnest  to  it, 
not  parenthetically,  but  on  very  purpose — the 
problem  of  their  lives— for  Christ's  sake  and 
in  Christ's  service,  and  held  themselves  as 
bound  to  do  it  as  if  they  had  been  by  himself 
expressly  engaged   for   it.     And,   you   must 


INDUSTRY.  21 

40  the  sarao.  Those  who  do  not  need  to 
toil  for  their  daily  bread,  their  very  leisure 
ts  a  hint  what  the  Lord  would  have  them  to 
clo.  As  you  have  no  business  of  your  own, 
he  would  have  you  devote  ycHJrselvcs  to  his 
business.  He  would  have  you  carry  on,  in  some 
of  its  manifold  departments,  that  work  which 
he  came  to  earth  to  do.  He  would  have  you 
^0  about  his  Father's  business  as  he  was  wont 
to  be  about  it,  Aiid  if  you  sliJl  persist  in 
living  to  yourselves,  you  cauuot  be  iiappy- 
You  cannot  spend  all  your  days  in  making  pin- 
cushions,or  reading  newspapers,  or  loitering  in 
club-rooms  and  coffee  iwuses,  and  yet  be  happy. 
If  you  profess  to  follow  Christ,  this  is  not  a 
Christian  life.  It  is  not  a  conscientious,  and 
so  it  cannot  be  a  comfortable  life.  And  if  th'C 
pin-cushion  or  the  newsi)aper  fail  to  make  you 
happy,  remember  the  reason — very  good  as 
relaxations,  ever  so  great  an  amount  of  these 
things  caa  never  be  a  business,  and  "wist  j'e 
not  that  you  should  be  about  your  Father's 
business  ?" 

2.  Having  made  a  v.'ise  and  deliberate 
selection  of  a  business,  go  on  with  it,  go 
through  with  it.      Persevering  mediocrity  is 


22  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

much  more  respectable  and  unspeakably  more 
useful  than  talented  inconstancy.  In  the 
heathery  turf  you  will  often  find  a  plant 
chiefly  remarkable  for  its  peculiar  roots  ;  from 
the  main  stem  down  to  the  minutest  fibre,  you 
will  find  them  ail  abruptly  terminate,  as  if 
shorn  or  bitten  off;  and  the  silly  superstition 
of  the  country  people  alleges,  that  once  on 
a  time  it  was  a  plant  of  singular  potency  for 
healing  all  sorts  of  maladies,  and  therefore 
the  great  enemy  of  man,  in  his  malignity,  bit 
off  the  roots  in  which  its  virtues  resided. 
This  plant,  with  this  quaint  history,  is  a  very 
good  emblem  of  many  well-meaning  but 
little-effecting  people.  The  efficacy  of  every 
good  work  lies  in  its  completion,  and  all  their 
good  works  terminate  abruptly  and  are  left  off 
unfinished.  The  devil  frustrates  their  efficacy 
by  cutting  off  their  ends  ;  their  unprofitable 
history  is  made  up  of  plans  and  projects, 
schemes  of  usefulness  that  w^ere  never  gone 
about,  and  magnificent  undertakings  that  were 
never  carried  forward ;  societies  that  were 
set  a-going,  then  left  to  shift  for  themselves, 
and  forlorn  beings  who  for  a  time  were  taken 
up  and  instructed,  and  just  when  they  were 


INDUSTRY.  23 

beginning  to  show  symptoms  of  improvement, 
were  cast  on  the  world  again.  But  others 
there  are,  wlio,  before  beginning  to  build, 
count  the  cost,  and  having  collected  their  ma- 
terials and  laid  their  foundations  deep  and 
broad,  go  on  to  rear  their  structure,  indiffer- 
ent to  more  tempting  schemes  and  sublimer 
enterprises  afterwards  suggested.  The  man 
who  provides  a  home  for  a  poor  neighbour, 
is  a  greater  benefactor  of  the  poor  than  he 
who  lays  the  foundation  of  a  stately  alms- 
house and  never  finishes  a  single  apartment. 
The  persevering  teacher  who  guides  one 
child  into  the  saving  knowledge  of  Christ,  and 
leads  him  on  to  established  habits  of  piety,  is  a 
more  useful  man  than  his  friend,  who  gathers 
in  a  room-full  of  ragged  children,  and  after 
a  few  weeks  of  waning  zeal,  turns  them  all 
adrift  in  the  streets  again.  The  patriot  who 
set  his  heart  on  abolishing  the  slave-trade,  and 
after  twenty  years  of  rebuffs  and  reviHngs,  of 
tantalized  hope  and  disappointed  effort,  at  last 
succeeded,  achieved  a  greater  work  than  if  he 
had  set  afloat  all  possible  schemes  of  philan- 
thropy, and  then  left  them,  one  after  the 
other,  to  sink  or  swini.     So  sliort  is  life  that 


24  LIFE    IX   EARNEST. 

we  can  afTord  to  lose  none  of  it  in  abortive 
undertakings  ;  and  when  once  we  are  assured 
that  a  given  work  is  one  which  it  is  worth  our 
while  to  do,  it  is  true  wisdom  to  set  about  it 
instantly,  and  when  once  we  have  begun  it,  it 
is  true  economy  to  finish  it. 


CHAPTER  II. 


INDUSTRY. 


"  Not  slothful  in  business.^* 

We  have  shown  how  this  precept  is  vio- 
lated by  various  descriptions  of  persons ;  by 
those  who  have  no  business  at  all,  and  those 
whose  business  is  only  an  active  idleness  ; 
and  finally,  by  those  who,  having  a  lawful 
business — a  good  and  honourable  work  as- 
signed them,  do  it  reluctantly  or  drowsily,  or 
leave  it  altogether  undone. 

There  are  some  who  have  no  business, 
and  are  of  no  use  in  the  world.  They  are 
doing  no  good  and  attempting  none ;  and 
when  they  are  taken  out  of  the  world,  their 
removal  creates  no  vacancy.  When  an  oak, 
or  any  noble  and  useful  tree  is  uprooted,  its 
removal  creates  a  blank.  For  years  after, 
when  you  look  to  the  place  which  once  knew 
3  25 


26  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

it,  you  see  that  something  is  missing.  The 
branches  of  adjacent  trees  have  not  yet  sup- 
plied the  void.  They  still  hesitate  to  occupy 
the  place  formerly  filled  by  their  powerful 
neighbour ;  and  there  is  still  a  deep  chasm  in 
the  ground — a  rugged  pit  which  shows  how 
far  the  giant-roots  once  spread.  But  when  a 
leafless  pole — a  Avooden  pin  is  plucked  up, 
it  comes  easy  and  clean  away.  There  is  no 
rending  of  the  turf,  no  marring  of  the  land- 
scape, no  vacuity  created,  no  regret.  It  leaves 
no  memento,  and  is  never  missed.  Now, 
which  are  you  ?  Are  you  cedars,  planted 
in  the  house  of  the  Lord,  casting  a  cool  and 
grateful  shadow  on  those  around  you  ?  Are 
you  palm-trees,  rich  and  flourishing,  yield- 
ing bounteous  fruit,  and  making  all  who 
know  you  bless  you  ?  Are  you  so  useful, 
that  were  you  once  away,  it  would  not  be  easy 
to  fill  your  place  again  ;  but  people,  as  they 
pointed  to  the  void  in  the  plantation — the  pit 
in  the  ground,  would  say,  "  It  was  here  that 
that  brave  cedar  grew :  it  was  here  that  that 
old  palm-tree  diffused  his  familiar  shadow  and 
showered  his  mellow  clusters  I"  Or  are  you 
a  peg — a  pin — a  rootless,  branchk^ss,  fruitless 


INDUSTRY.  27 

thing  that  may  be  pulled  up  any  day,  and 
no  one  ever  care  to  ask  what  has  become 
of  it?  What  are  you  doing?  What  are 
you  contributing  to  the  world's  happiness, 
or  the  Church's  glory?  What  is  your 
business  ? 

Individuals  there  are  who  are  doing  some- 
thing, though  it  would  be  difficult  to  specify 
what.  They  are  busy ;  but  it  is  a  busy 
idleness* 

"  Their  only  labour  is  to  kill  the  time. 
And  labour  dire  it  is,  and  weary  wo. 
They  sit,  they  loll,  turn  o'er  some  idle  rhyme, 
Or  saunter  forth,  with  tottering  steps  and  slow  : 
This  soon  too  rude  an  exercise  they  find — 
Strait  on  the  couch  their  limbs  again  they  throw, 
Where  hours  on  hours  they  sighing  lie  reclined, 
And  court   the  rapoury  god  soft-breathing  in   the 
wind." 

They  think  that  they  are  busy,  though  iheir 
chief  business  be  to  get  quit  of  themselves. 
To  amiihilate  time,  to  quiet  conscience,  to 
banish  care,  to  keep  ennui  out  at  one  door 
and  serious  thoughts  out  at  the  other,  gives 
ihcm  all  their  occupation.  And,  betwixt  their 
fluttering   visits   and   frivolous   engagements. 


28  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

their  midnight  diversions,  their  haggard  morn- 
ings, and  shortened  days,  their  yawning  at- 
tempts at  reading,  and  sulky  appHcation  to 
matters  of  business  which  they  cannot  well 
evade ;  betwixt  mobs  of  callers  and  shoals  of 
ceremonious  notes,  they  fuss  and  fret  them- 
selves into  the  pleasant  belief  that  they  are 
the  most  worried  and  hard-driven  of  mortal 
creatures.  Even  when  groaning  in  prospect 
of  interminable  hours,  they  have  not  a  moment 
to  spare ;  and  a  chief  employment  of  their 
leisure  is  to  appear  in  a  constant  hurry. 
Could  you  imbody  in  matter-of-fact  all  their 
sham  activity  and  bustling  show ;  could 
you  write  down  a  truthful  enumeration  of 
the  doings  of  a  single  week,  I  fear  there 
would  not  be  found  one  act  which,  were 
He  saying,  "  Thou  fool,  this  night  shall  thy 
soul  be  required  of  thee,"  the  Judge  of  all 
would  accept  as  a  right  deed  or  rightly 
done.  It  is  possible  to  be  very  busy,  and 
yet  very  idle.  It  is  possible  to  be  serious 
about  trifles,  and  to  exhaust  one's  energies  in 
doing  nothing.  It  is  possible  to  be  toiling  all 
one's  days  in  doing  that  which,  in  the  infa- 
tifation  of  fashion,  or  the  delirium  of  ambition. 


INDUSTRY.  29 

will  look  exceedingly  august  and  important ; 
but  which  the  first  flash  of  eternity  will  trans- 
mute into  shame  and  everlasting  contempt. 

Then,  among  those  who  have  really  got  a 
work  to  do — whose  calling  is  lawful  or  some- 
thing more — perhaps  a  direct  vocation  in  the 
service  of  God — there  are  three  classes  who 
violate  the  precept  of  the  text — those  who  do 
their  work  grudgingly,  or  drowsih',  or  not  at 
all — the  sloths,  the  somnambuHsts,  and  the 
day-dreamers.  Some  do  it  grudging]}^  They 
have  not  a  heart  for  work  ;  and  of  all  Avork, 
least  heart  for  that  which  God  has  given  them. 
Instead  of  that  angelic  alacrity  which  speeds 
instinctively  on  the  service  which  God  as- 
signs ;  that  healthy  love  of  labour  which  a 
loyal  and  well-conditioned  soul  would  exliibit, 
they  postpone  every  thing  to  the  latest  mo- 
ment, and  then  go  whimpering  and  growling 
to  the  hated  task  as  if  they  were  about  to  un- 
dergo some  dismal  punishment.  They  have 
a  strange  idea  of  occupation.  They  look  on 
it  as  a  drug,  a  penally,  a  goblin,  a  fiend, 
something  very  fierce  and  cruel,  something 
very  nauseous ;  and  they  would  gladly  smuggle 
through  existence  by  one  of  those  side-paths 
3- 


so  LIFE   IN   KARNEST. 

which  the  grim  giants,  labour  and  industry, 
do  not  guard. 

Others  again,  who  do  not  quite  refuse 
their  work,  put  only  half  a  soul  into  it. 
They  have  no  zeal  for  their  profession. 
They  somehow  scramble  through  it ;  but 
it  is  without  any  noble  enthusiasm — any  ap- 
petite for  work  or  any  love  to  the  God  who 
gives  it.  If  they  are  intrusted  with  the  pro- 
perty of  others,  they  cannot  boast  as  Jacob 
did :  "  In  the  day  the  drought  consumed  me, 
and  the  frost  by  night;  and  my  sleep  de- 
parted from  mine  eyes.  God  hath  seen  mine 
affliction  and  the  labour  of  my  hands."  If 
intrusted  with  the  souls  of  others,  they  can- 
not reckon  up  "the  abundant  labours,  the 
often  journeyings,  the  weariness  and  painful- 
ness,  the  watchings,  the  hunger  and  thirst," 
the  perils  and  privations  which,  for  the  love 
of  his  Master  and  his  Master's  work,  the 
apostle  of  the  Gentiles  joyfully  encountered. 
If  scholars,  they  are  content  to  learn  the  les- 
son, so  that  no  fault  shall  be  found.  If  at 
service,  they  aspire  to  nothing  more  than 
fulfilling  their  inevitable  toils.  And  if  occu- 
pying official  stations,  they  are  satisfied  with 


INDUSTRY.  81 

a  decent  discharge  of  customary  duties,  and 
are  glad  if  they  leave  things  no  worse  than 
they  found  them.  They  are  hirelings ; 
heartless  in  all  they  do.  Their  work  is 
so  sleepily  done  that  it  is  enough  to  make 
you  lethargic  to  labour  in  their  company ; 
and,  before  they  go  zealously  and  wakefully 
to  work,  they  would  need  to  be  startled 
up  into  the  day-light  of  actual  existence — 
they  would  need  to  be  shaken  from  that 
torpor  into  which  the  very  sight  of  labour  is 
apt  to  entrance  them.  Oh,  happier  far,  to 
lose  health  and  life  itself  in  clear,  brisk,  con- 
scious working;  to  spend  the  last  atom  of 
strength,  and  yield  the  vital  spark  itself  in 
joyful,  wakeful  efforts  for  Him  who  did  all  for 
us — than  to  drawl  through  a  dreaming  life, 
with  all  the  fatigue  of  labour  and  nothing  of 
its  sweetness  ;  snoring  in  a  constant  lethargy ; 
sleeping  while  you  work,  and  night-mared 
with  labour  when  you  really  sleep. 

And,  besides  the  procrastinating  class, 
those  are  "slothful  in  business"  who  do 
no  business  at  all.  And  there  are  such 
persons — agreeable,  self-complacent,  plausible 
persons — who  really  fancy  that   they   have 


83  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

done  a  great  deal  because  they  have  intended 
to  do  so  much.  Their  Hfe  is  made  up  of 
good  purposes,  splendid  projects,  and  heroic 
resolutions.  They  live  in  the  region  which 
the  poet  has  described : — 

"A  pleasing  land  of  drowsy-head  it  was, 
Of  dreams  that  wave  before  the  half-shut  eye, 
And  of  gay  castles  in  the  clouds  that  pass, 
For  ever  flushing  round  a  summer's  sky." 

They  have  performed  so  many  journeys  and 
made  so  many  discoveries,  and  won  so  many 
laurels  in  this  aerial  clime,  that  hfe  is  over, 
and  they  find  their  real  work  is  not  begun. 
Like  the  dreamer  who  is  getting  great  sums  of 
money  in  his  sleep,  and  who,  when  he  awakes, 
opens  his  till  or  his  pocket-book  almost  ex- 
pecting to  find  it  full,  the  day-dreamer,  the 
projector,  awaking  up  at  the  close  of  life,  can 
hardly  beheve  that  after  his  distinct  and 
glorious  visions,  he  is  leaving  the  world  no 
wiser,  mankind  no  richer,  and  his  own  home 
no  happier  for  all  the  golden  prospects  which 
have  flitted  through  his  busy  brain.  What  a 
blessed  world  it  were,  how  happy  and  how 
rich,  if  all  the  idlers  were  working,  if  all  the 


INDUSTRY.  88 

workers  were  awake,  and  if  all  the  projectors 
were  practical  men ! 

I  trust,  my  readers,  that  many  among  you 
are  desiroys  to  be  active  Christians.  Perhaps 
the  following  hints  may  be  helpful  to  those 
who  wish  to  serve  the  Lord  by  diligence  in 
business. 

1.  Have  a  calling  in  which  it  is  worth 
while  to  be  busy.  There  are  many  callings 
in  which  it  is  lawful  for  the  Christian  to 
"abide."  LHe  may  be  a  lawyer  like  Sir 
Matthew  Hale,  or  a  physician  like  Haller, 
Heberden,  and  Mason  Goode.  He  may  be 
a  painter  like  West,  or  a  sculptor  like  Bacon, 
or  a  poet  like  MiUon  and  Klopstock  and 
Cowper.  He  may  be  a  trader  like  Thornton 
and  the  Hardcastles,  or  a  philosopher  hke 
Boyle  and  Boerhaave.  He  may  be  a  hard- 
working artisan  like  the  Yorkshire  Black- 
smith and  the  Watchmaker  of  Geneva;  or 
he  may  toil  for  his  daily  bread  like  the  Happy 
Waterman,  and  the  Wallsend  Miner,  and  the 
Shepherd  of  Salisbury  Plain,  and  many  a  do- 
mestic servant  of  humble  but  pious  memory.  ] 
And  the  business  of  this  ordinary  calling,  the 


34  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

disciple  of  Christ  must  discharge  heartily, 
and  Avith  all  his  might.  He  must  labour  to  be 
eminent  and  exemplary  in  his  own  profession. 
He  should  seek,  for  the  sake  of  the  gospel, 
to  be  first-rate  in  his  own  department.  But 
over  and  above  his  ordinary  calHng  as  a 
member  of  society,  the  believer  has  his 
special  calling  as  a  member  of  the  church. 
He  has  a  direct  work  to  do  in  his  Saviour's 
service.  Some  have  so  much  of  their 
time  at  their  own  disposal,  that  they  might 
almost  make  their  calling  as  members  of 
Christ's  church  the  business  of  their  lives. 
And  each  who  is  in  this  privileged  situ- 
ation should  consider  what  is  the  parti- 
cular line  of  things  for  which  his  taste 
and  talents  most  urgently  predispose  him, 
and  for  which  his  training  and  station  best 
adapt  him.  The  healthiest  condition  of 
the  church  is  where  there  is  a  member  for 
every  office,  and  where  every  member  fulfils 
his  own  office,*  where  there  are  no  defects 
and  no  transpositions,  but  each  is  allowed  to 

*  Rom.  xii.  3—8.  .^ 


INDUSTRY.  35 

ply  to  the  utmost  the  work  for  which  God  has 
intended  him ;  where  Newton  writes  his 
letters,  and  Butler  his  Analogy  ;  where,  in  the 
leisure  of  the  olden  ministry,  Matthew  Henry 
compiles  his  Commentary,  and  where,  in  the 
calm  retreat  of  Olney,  Cowper  pours  forth  his 
devotional  melodies ;  where  Venn  cultivates 
his  corner  of  the  vineyard,  and  Whitefield 
ranges  over  the  field  of  the  world ;  where 
President  Edwards  is  locked  up  in  his  study, 
and  Wilberforce  is  detained  in  the  parlour; 
where  the  adventurous  Carey  goes  down  into 
the  pit,  and  the  sturdy  arm  of  Fuller  deals 
out  the  rope  ;  where  he  who  ministers,  waits 
on  his  ministering,  and  he  that  teacheth  on 
teaching,  and  he  that  exhorteth  on  exhor- 
tation, and  he  who  hath  to  give  gives  libe- 
rally, and  he  who  has  method  and  good 
management  rules  dihgently,  and  he  who  can 
pay  visits  of  mercy  pays  them  cheerfully.  And 
if  the  Lord  has  given  you  an  abundance  of 
unoccupied  leisure,  he  has  along  with  it  given 
you  some  talent  or  other,  and  says,  "  Occupy 
till  I  come."  Find  out  what  it  is  that  you 
best  can  do,  or  what  it  is  which,  if  you  neglect 
it,  is  hkely  to  be  left  undone.     And  whether 


86  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

you  select  as  your  sphere  of  Christian  useful- 
ness, a  Sabbath  class  or  a  ragged  school, 
a  local  prayer-meeting,  or  a  district  for 
domicihary  visitation;  whether  you  devote 
yourself  to  the  interests  of  some  evange- 
listic society,  or  labour  secretly  from  house  to 
house,  whatever  line  of  things  you  select, 
make  it  your  "business."  Pursue  it  so 
earnestly,  that  though  it  were  only  in  that  one 
field  of  activity  you  would  evince  yourself  no 
common  Christian. 

2.  Make  the  most  of  time.  Some  have 
little  leisure,  but  there  are  sundry  expedients, 
any  one  of  which,  if  fairly  tried,  would  make 
that  httle  leisure  longer.  (1.)  Economy. 
Most  of  the  men  who  have  died  enormously 
rich,  acquired  their  wealth,  not  in  huge  wind- 
falls, but  by  minute  and  careful  accumulations. 
It  was  not  one  vast  sum  bequeathed  to  them 
after  another,  which  overwhelmed  them  with 
inevitable  opulence ;  but  it  was  the  loose 
money  which  most  men  would  lavish  away  ; 
the  little  sums  which  many  would  not  deem 
worth  looking  after;  the  pennies  and  six- 
pences of  which  you  would  keep  no  reckon- 
ing, these  are  the  items  which,  year  by  year 


INDUSTRY.  37 

piled  up,  have  reared  their  pyramid  of  for- 
tune. From  these  monej^-maicers  let  us  learn 
the  nobler  "avarice  of  time."  One  of  the 
longest  and  most  elaborate  poems  of  recent 
times*  was  composed  in  the  streets  of  Lon- 
don by  a  physician  in  busy  practice  during 
the  brief  snatches  of  time,  when  passing 
from  one  patient's  door  to  another.  And 
in  order  to  achieve  some  good  work 
which  you  have  much  at  heart,  you  may 
not  be  able  to  secure  an  entire  week,  or 
even  an  uninterrupted  day.  But  try  what 
you  can  make  of  the  broken  fragments  of 
time.  Glean  up  its  golden  dust ;  those  fil- 
ings and  parings  of  precious  duration,  those 
leavings  of  days  and  remnants  of  hours  which 
so  many  sweep  out  into  the  waste  of  existence. 
Perhaps,  if  you  be  a  miser  of  moments,  if  you 

*  Good's  Trnnslaiion  of  Lucretius.  A  similar  instance 
of  literary  industry  is  recorded  of  Dr.  Burney,  the  mu- 
sician. With  the  help  of  pocket  grammars  and  dic- 
tionaries, which  he  had  taken  the  trouble  to  write  out 
for  his  own  use,  he  acquired  the  French  and  Italian 
languages  when  riding  on  horseback  from  place  to 
plnce  to  give  h's  professional  instructions. 


38  LIFE    IN   EARNEST. 

be  frugal  and  hoard  up  odd  minutes  and  half- 
hours  and  unexpected  holidays,  your  care- 
ful gleanings  may  eke  out  a  long  and  useful 
life,  and  you  may  die  at  last  richer  in  exist- 
ence than  multitudes  whose  time  is  all  their 
own.  The  time  which  some  men  waste  in 
superfluous  slumber  and  idle  visits  and  de- 
sultory application,  were  it  all  redeemed, 
would  give  them  wealth  of  leisure,  and  en- 
able them  to  execute  undertakings  for  which 
they  deem  a  less  worried  life  than  their's  es- 
sential. When  a  person  says,  "  I  have  no  time 
to  pray,  no  time  to  read  the  Bible,  no  time  to 
improve  my  mind  nor  do  a  kind  turn  to  a 
neighbour,"  he  may  be  saying  what  he  thinks, 
but  he  should  not  think  what  he  says ;  for  if 
he  has  not  got  the  time  already,  he  may  get 
it  by  redeeming  it.  (2.)  Punctuality.  A  sin- 
gular mischance  has  occurred  to  some  of  our 
friends.  At  the  instant  when  he  ushered  them 
on  existence,  God  gave  them  a  work  to  do, 
and  he  also  gave  them  a  competency  of  lime, 
so  much  time,  that  if  they  began  at  the  right 
moment,  and  wrought  with  sufficient  vigour, 
their  time  and  their  work  would  end  together. 


INDUSTRY.  39 

But  a  good  many  years  ago  a  strange  mis- 
fortune befel  them.  A  fragment  of  their 
allotted  time  was  lost.  They  cannot  tell 
what  became  of  it;  but  sure  enough  it  has 
dropped  out  of  existence  ;  for  just  like  two 
measuring-lines  laid  alongside,  the  one  an 
inch  shorter  than  the  other,  their  work  and 
their  time  run  parallel,  but  the  work  is 
always  ten  minutes  in  advance  of  the  time. 
They  are  not  irregular.  They  are  never 
too  soon.  Their  letters  are  posted  the  very 
minute  after  the  mail  is  shut  ;  they  arrive 
at  the  wharf  just  in  time  to  see  the  steam- 
boat off;  they  come  in  sight  of  the  depot 
precisely  when  the  train  starts.  They  do 
not  break  any  engagement  nor  neglect  any 
duty  ;  but  they  systematically  go  about  it 
too  late,  and  usually  too  late  by  about  the 
same  fatal  interval.  How  can  they  retrieve 
the  lost  fragment,  so  essential  to  character 
and  comfort  ?  Perhaps  by  a  device  like 
this :  suppose  that  on  some  auspicious  morn- 
ing they  contrived  to  rise  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  before  their  usual  time,  and  were  ready 
for  their  morning  worship  fifteen  minutes 
sooner  than  they  have  been  for  the  last  ten 


40  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

years  ;  or,  what  will  equally  answer  the  end, 
suppose  that  for  once  they  merged  their  morn- 
ing meal  altogether,  and  went  straight  out  to 
the  engagements  of  the  day  ;  suppose  that 
they  arrived  at  the  class-room,  or  the  work- 
shop, or  the  place  of  business,  fifteen  minutes 
before  their  usual  time,  or  that  they  forced 
themselves  to  the  appointed  rendezvous  on  the 
week-day,  or  to  the  sanctuary  on  the  Sabbath- 
day,  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  their  in- 
stinctive time  of  going — all  would  yet  be  well. 
This  system  carried  out  would  bring  the 
world  and  themselves  to  synchronize  ;  they 
and  the  marching  hours  would  come  to  keep 
step  again,  and  moving  on  in  harmony,  they 
would  escape  the  jolting  fatigue  and  awkward- 
ness they  used  to  feel,  when  old  Father  Time 
put  the  right  foot  foremost  and  they  advanced 
the  left ;  their  reputation  would  be  retrieved, 
and  friends,  who  at  present  fret,  would  begin  to 
smile  ;  their  fortunes  w^ould  be  made  ;  their 
satisfaction  intheir  work  would  be  doubled ;  and 
their  influence  over  others  and  their  power  for 
usefulness  would  be  unspeakably  augmented. 
(3.)  Method.  A  man  has  got  twenty  or 
thirty  letters  and   packets  to   carry  to   their 


fNDT'STRY.  41 

several  destinations  ;    but  instead  of  arrang- 
ing  them   beforehand,   and    putting   all    ad- 
dressed to    the   same    locality  in   a    separate 
parcel,  he  crams  the  whole  into  his  promis- 
cuous   bag,   and   trudges    off    to    the   west, 
for  he  knows  that  he  has  got  a  letter  directed 
thither ;    that  letter    he     delivers,   and    hies 
away  to  the   east,  when  lo !  the  same  hand- 
ful which   brings   out   the   invoice  for   Mer- 
chant's  Row  contains  a  brief  for   the  Court 
House,   and   a  petition,  which  should   have 
been  left,  had  he  noticed   it   earher,  at   the 
Capitol.     Accordingly  he   retraces  his   steps 
and  repairs  the  omission,  and  then  performs 
a  transit  from   the    north  to  the   south ;   till 
in    two  days  he  overtakes  the  work  of  one, 
and  travels  fifty  miles  to  accomplish  as  much 
as  a  man   of  method  would    have  managed 
in   fifteen.      The   man   who   has   thoroughly 
mastered   that   lesson,    "A   place   for  every 
thing,   and   every   thing   in   its   place,"  will 
save  a  world  of  time.     He  loses   no  leisure 
seeking  for  the  unanswered  letter  or  the  lost 
receipt ;  he  does  not  need  to  travel  the  same 
road  twice  ;  and  hence  it  is  that  some  of  the 
busiest  men  have  the  least  of  a  busy  look. 
4* 


42  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

Instead  of  slamming  doors  and  ringing  alann- 
bells,  and  knocking  over  chairs  and  children 
in  their  headlong  hurry,  they  move  about 
deliberately,  for  they  have  made  their  calcula- 
tions, and  know  what  time  they  can  count  upon. 
And  just  as  a  prodigal  of  large  fortune  is 
obliged  to  do  shabby  things,  whilst  an  orderly 
man  of  moderate  income  has  always  an  easy 
look,  as  if  there  Avere  still  something  left  in 
his  pocket — as  he  can  afford  to  pay  for  goods 
when  he  buys  them.,  and  to  put  something 
into  the  collecting-box  when  it  passes  him, 
and  after  he  has  discharged  all  his  debts  has 
still  something  to  spare — so  is  it  with  the 
methodical  husbanders  and  the  disorderly 
spendthrifts  of  time.  Those  who  live  with- 
out a  plan  have  never  any  leisure,  for  their 
work  is  never  done  :  those  who  titne  their 
engagements  and  arrange  their  work  be- 
forehand, can  bear  an  occasional  interrup- 
tion. They  can  reserve  an  evening  hour 
for  their  families  ;  they  can  sometimes  take  a 
walk  into  the  country,  or  drop  in  to  see  a 
friend  ;  they  can  now  and  then  contrive  to 
read  a  useful  book ;  and  amidst  all  their  im- 
portant avocations,  they  have  a  tranquil  and 


INDUSTRY.  43 

opulent  appearance,  £is  if  they  still  had  plenty 
of  time.  (4.)  Promptitude.  Every  scene 
of  occupation  is  haunted  by  that  "thief  of 
time,'*  procrastination;  and  all  his  ingenuity 
is  directed  to  steal  that  best  of  opportunities, 
the  present  time.  The  disease  of  humanity, 
(disinclination  to  the  work  God  has  given,) 
more  frequently  takes  the  form  of  dilatoriness 
than  a  downright  and  decided  refusal.  But 
delay  shortens  life  and  abridges  industry,  just 
as  promptitude  enlarges  both.  You  have  a 
certain  amount  of  work  before  you,  and  in  all 
likelihood  some  unexpected  engagements  may 
be  superadded  as  the  time  wears  on.  You 
may  begin  that  work  immediately,  or  you 
may  postpone  it  till  the  evening,  or  till  the 
week  is  closing,  or  till  near  the  close  of 
life.  Your  sense  of  duty  insists  on  its  being 
done;  but  procrastination  says.  "It  will  be 
pleasanter  to  do  it  by-and-by."  What  in- 
fatuation !  To  end  each  day  in  a  hurry,  and 
life  itself  in  a  panic  !  And  when  the  flurried 
evening  has  closed,  and  the  fevered  life  is 
over,  to  leave  half  your  work  undone  !  What- 
ever the  business  be,  do  it  instantly,  if  you 
would  do  it  easily.    Life  will  be  long  enough 


44  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

for  the  work  assigned  if  you  be  prompt  enough. 
Clear  off  arrears  of  neglected  duty ;  and  once 
the  disheartening  accumulations  of  the  past 
are  overtaken,  let  not  that  mountain  of  diffi- 
culty rise  again.  Prefer  duty  to  diversion, 
and  cultivate  that  athletic  frame  of  soul 
which  rejoices  in  abundant  occupation;  and 
you  will  soon  find  the  sweetness  of  that 
repose  which  follows  finished  work,  and  the 
zest  of  that  recreation  in  which  no  delinquent 
feeling  mingles,  and  on  which  no  neglected 
duty  frowns. 


CHAPTER  111. 


AN    EYE    TO    THE    LORD    JESUS. 


"  Serving  the  Lord^ 

"  ServixVg  the  Lord."  The  title  which  JEimes 
and  Jude  take  to  themselves  at  the  outset  of 
their  Epistles  is  '*  James — Jude — a  servant  of 
Jesus  Christ."  The  original  is  more  forcible 
still.  In  the  inscriptions  of  these  Epistles,  as 
well  as  in  this  passage,  a  true  and  emphatic 
rendering  would  be,"  a  slave  of  Jesus  Christ;" 
"  Not  slothful  in  business,  fervent  in  spirit,  the 
Lord's  bondmen.^''  The  behever  is  the  happy- 
captive  of  Jesus  Christ;  he  has  fastened  on 
himself  Immanuel's  easy  yoke,  the  light  bur- 
den and  delicious  chains  of  a  Saviour's  love; 
and  though  Christ  says,  "  Henceforth  I  call 
you  no  more  servants,"  the  disciple  cannot 
give  up  the  designation.  There  is  no  other 
term  by  which,  at  times,  he  can  express  that 

45 


46  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

feeling  of  intense  devotedness  and  self-sur- 
render which  fills  his  loyal  bosom.  "  Truly,  O 
Lord,  I  am  thy  servant,  and  the  son  of  thine 
handmaid."  And  far  from  feeling  any  igno- 
miny in  the  appellation,  there  are  times  when 
no  name  of  Jesus  sounds  sweeter  in  his  ear, 
than^"  Jesus,  my  Lord  !  Jesus,  my  Master  !" 
and  when  no  designation  more  accords  with 
his  feehng  of  entire  devotedness,  than  James, 
a  servant,  Jude,  a  slave  of  Jesus  Christ, 
David,  a  bondsman  of  the  Lord.  There  are 
times  when  the  behever  has  such  adoring 
views  of  his  Saviour's  excellency,  and  such 
affecting  views  of  his  Saviour's  claims,  that 
rather  than  refuse  one  requirement,  he  only 
grudges  that  the  yoke  is  so  easy  that  he  can 
-  scarce  perceive  it,  the  burden  so  light  that  he 
can  scarcely  recognise  himself  as  a  serv^ant. 
He  would  like  something  which  would  iden- 
tify him  more  closely  with  his  beloved  Saviour, 
some  open  badge  that  he  might  carry,  and 
which  would  say  for  him, 

"I'm  not  ashamed  to  own  my  Lord." 

If  Christ  would  bore  his  ear  to  the  door-post 
— if  Christ  would   only  give  him  out  of  his 


AN  FA'E  TO  THE  LORD  JESUS.  47 

own  hand  his  daily  task  to  do — he  would  like 
it  well ;  and  ceasing  to  be  the  servant  of  men, 
he  would  fain  become  the  servant  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

And  going  to  the  Saviour  in  this  ardent 
mood  of  mind,  and  saying,  "  Lord,  what 
wouldst  thou  hav^e  me  to  do  ?"  the  Saviour 
hands  you  back  the  Bible.  He  accepts  you 
for  his  servant,  and  he  directs  you  what  ser- 
vice he  would  have  you  to  perform.  The 
Book  which  he  gives  you  is  as  really  the  di- 
rectory of  Christ's  servants,  as  is  the  sealed 
paper  of  instructions  which  the  commander  of 
an  expedition  takes  with  him  when  he  goes  to 
sea,  or  the  letter  of  directions  which  the  absent 
nobleman  sends  to  the  steward  on  his  estates 
or  to  the  servant  in  his  house.  The  only  dif- 
ference is,  its  generality.  Instead  of  making 
out  a  separate  copy  for  your  specific  use,  in- 
dicating the  different  things  which  he  would 
have  you  do  from  day  to  day,  and  sending  it 
direct  to  yourself,  authenticated  by  his  own 
autograph,  and  by  the  precision  and  indi- 
viduality of  its  details  evidently  designed  for 
yourself  exclusively ;  the  volume  of  his  will 
is  of  a  wider  aspect  and  more  miscellaneous 


48  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

character.  It  effectually  anticipates  each  step 
of  your  individual  history,  and  prescribes  each 
act  of  your  personal  duty  ;  but  intermingHng 
these  with  matters  of  promiscuous  import,  it 
leaves  abundant  scope  for  your  honesty  and 
ingenuity  to  find  out  the  precise  things  which 
your  Lord  would  have  you  to  do.  Had  it 
been  otherwise,  had  there  been  put  into  the 
hand  of  ea;ch  disciple,  the  moment  he  pro- 
fessed his  faith  in  Christ,  a  sealed  paper  of 
instructions,  containing  an  enumeration  of  the 
special  services  which  his  Lord  would  have 
this  new  disciple  to  render,  prescribing  a 
certain  number  of  tasks  which  he  expected 
that  disciple  to  perform,  and  specifying  the 
very  way  in  which  he  would  have  them  done  ; 
in  proportion  as  this  directory  was  precise 
and  rigid,  so  would  it  cease  to  be  the  test  of 
fidehty ;  so  would  it  abridge  the  limits  with- 
in Avhich  an  unrestricted  loyalty  may  dis- 
play itself.  As  it  is,  the  directory  is  so 
plain  that  he  who  runs  may  read ;  not  so 
plain,  however,  but  that  he  who  stands  still 
and  ponders  will  find  a  great  deal  which  the 
runner  could  not  read.  It  is  so  peremptory, 
that   no   man   can   call   Jesus   Lord  without 


AN  EYE  TO  THE  LORD  JESUS.      49 

doing  the  things  which  it  commands ;  but 
withal  so  general,  as  to  leave  many  things 
to  the  candour  and  cordiality  of  sound-hearted 
disciples.  It  is  precise  enough  to  indicate  the 
tempers  and  the  graces  and  the  good  works 
with  which  the  Saviour  is  well  pleased,  and 
by  which  the  Father  is  glorified ;  but  it  no- 
where fixes  the  exact  amount  of  any  one  of 
these,  short  of  which  Christ  will  inot  suffer  a 
disciple  to  stop,  or  beyond  which  he  does  not 
expect  a  disciple  to  go.  The  Bible  docs  not 
deal  in  maximums  and  minimums  ;  it  does 
not  weigh  and  measure  out,  by  definite  pro- 
portions, the  ingredients  of  regenerate  cha- 
racter ;  but  it  specifies  what  these  ingredients 
are,  and  leaves  it  to  the  zeal  of  each  believer 
to  add  to  his  faith,  not  as  many,  but  as  much 
of  each  of  these  things  as  he  pleases.  Firmly 
averring,  on  the  one  hand,  that  without  each 
and  all  of  these  graces  a  man  cannot  belong 
to  Christ ;  it,  on  the  other  hand,  omits  to 
specify  how  much  of  each  a  man  must  be 
able  to  produce  before  Jesus  will  say  to  him, 
*'  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant ;  enter 
thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord."  The  Bible 
announces  those  qualities  which  a  man  must 
5 


50  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

have,  in  order  to  prove  him  born  from  above  , 
but  it  does  not  tell  what  quantity  of  each  he 
must  exhibit,  in  order  to  secure  the  smile  of 
his  Master,  and  an  abundant  entrance  into 
his  heavenly  kingdom.  By  this  definiteness 
on  the  outward  side  it  leaves  no  room  for 
hypocrisy ;  but  by  this  indefiniteness  on  the 
inner  side  it  leaves  large  place  for  the  works 
and  service  of  faith  and  patience,  the  filial 
enterprise,  the  affectionate  voluntaries  and 
free-will  offerings,  of  those  who  know  no  hmit 
to  their  labours,  except  the  hmit  of  their  love 
to  Christ. 

You  will  observe,  that  at  the  time  when 
you  become  a  disciple  of  Christ,  your  Lord 
and  Master  takes  the  whole  domain  of  your 
employments  under  his  own  jurisdiction.  He 
requires  you  to  consecrate  your  ordinary  call- 
ing to  him,  and  to  do,  over  and  above,  many 
special  things  expressly  for  himself.  What- 
soever you  do,  in  word  or  deed,  he  desires 
that  you  should  do  it  in  his  name  ;  not  work- 
ing like  a  worldling,  and  praying  like  a  Chris- 
tian, but  both  in  work  and  prayer,  both  in 
things  secular  and  things  sacred,  setting  him- 
self before  you,  carrying  out  his   rules,  and 


AN    EYE    TO    THE    LORD    JESUS.  51 

seeking  to  please  him.  One  is  your  Master, 
even  Christ,  and  he  is  your  Master  in  every 
thing,  the  Master  of  your  thoughts,  your 
words,  your  family  arrangements,  your  busi- 
ness transactions, — the  Master  of  your  work- 
ing time,  as  well  as  of  your  Sabbath  day, — 
the  Lord  of  your  shop  and  counting-room,  as 
well  as  of  your  closet  and  your  pew, — because 
the  Lord  of  your  affections,  the  proprietor  of 
your  very  self  besides.  The  Christian  is  one 
who  may  do  many  things  from  secondary 
motives — from  the  pleasure  they  afford  his 
friends — from  the  gratification  they  give  to 
his  own  tastes  and  predilections — from  his 
abstract  convictions  of  what  is  honest,  lovely, 
and  of  good  report ;  but  his  main  and  pre- 
dominant motive,  that  which  is  paramount 
over  every  other,  and  which,  when  fully  pre- 
sented, is  conclusive  against  every  other,  is 
affection  for  his  Heavenly  Friend.  One  is  his 
Master,  even  Christ,  and  the  love  of  Christ 
constraineth  him. 

Look  now  at  the  advantages  of  a  motive 
like  this.  See  how  loyalty  to  Christ  secures 
diligence  in  business — whether  that  be  busi- 


52  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

ness  strictly  religious  or  business  more  mis- 
cellaneous. 

1.  Love  lo  Christ  is  an  abiding  motive.  It 
is  neither  a  fancy,  nor  a  sentiment,  nor  an 
evanescent  emotion.  It  is  a  principle — calm, 
steady,  undecaying.  It  was  once  a  problem 
in  mechanics,  to  find  a  pendulum  which  should 
be  equally  long  in  all  weathers — which  should 
make  the  same  number  of  vibrations  in  the 
summer's  heat  and  in  the  winter's  cold.  They 
have  now  found  it  out.  By  a  process  of  com- 
pensations they  make  the  rod  lengthen  one 
way  as  much  as  it  contracts  another,  so  that 
the  centre  of  motion  is  always  the  same :  the 
pendulum  swings  the  same  number  of  beats 
in  a  day  of  January  as  in  a  day  of  June ;  and 
the  index  travels  over  the  dial-plate  with  the 
same  uniformity,  whether  the  heat  try  to 
lengthen,  or  the  cold  to  shorten,  the  propel- 
ling power.  Now,  the  moving  power  in  some 
men's  minds  is  sadly  susceptible  of  surround- 
ing influences.  It  is  not  principle,  but  feel- 
ing, which  forms  their  pendulum  rod;  and 
according  as  this  very  variable  material  is 
affected,  their  index  creeps  or  gallops,  they 


AN    EYE    TO    THE    LORD    JESUS.  53 

are  swift  or  slow  in  the  work  given  them  to 
do.  But  principle  is  hke  the  compensation- 
rod,  which  neither  k'ngthens  in  the  languid 
heat,  nor  shortens  in  the  brisker  cold  ;  but 
does  the  same  work  day  by  day,  whether  the 
ice-winds  whistle,  or  the  simoom  glows.  Of 
all  principles,  a  high-principled  affection  to 
the  Saviour  is  the  steadiest  and  most  secure. 
Other  incentives  to  action  are  apt  to  alter  or 
lose  their  influence  altogether.  You  once 
did  many  things  for  the  sake  of  friends  whose 
wishes,  expressed  or  understood,  were  your 
incentive,  and  whose  ready  smile  was  your  re- 
compense. But  that  motive  to  activity  is  closed. 
Those  friends  are  now  gone  where  your  in- 
dustry cannot  enrich  them,  nor  your  kindness 
comfort  them.  Or  if  they  remain,  they  are  no 
longer  the  same  that  once  they  were.  The 
magic  hght  has  faded  from  off  them.  The 
mysterious  interest  Avhich  hovered  round  them 
has  gone  up  like  a  mountain  mist,  and  left 
them  in  their  wintery  coldness  or  natural  rug- 
gedness  ;  no  longer  those  whom  once  you  took 
them  to  be.  Or  you  did  many  things  for  fame  ; 
and  were  well  requited  for  a  winter's  work 
5* 


54  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

when  tiie  iiosannah  of  a  tumultous  assembly, 
or  the  psean  of  a  newspaper  paragraph  pro- 
claimed you  the  hero  of  the  hour.  But  even 
that  sort  of  satisfaction  has  passed  away,  and, 
meager  diet  as  these  plaudits  always  were,  you 
stand  on  the  hungry  pinnacle,  and,  like  other 
aspirants  of  the  same  desert-roaming  school,* 
you  snufF;  but,  alas  !  the  breeze  has  changed. 
The  popular  taste,  the  wind  of  fashion,  has 
entirely  veered  about  ;  and,  except  an  occa- 
sional tantahzing  whiif  from  the  oasis  of  a 
receding  popularity,  the  sweet  gust  of  its 
green  pastures  regales  you  no  more.  Or  you 
are  used  to  work  for  money— -lor  literal  bank- 
notes and  pieces  of  minted  metal.  Yes,  mere 
money  is  your  motive.  And  you  will  sit 
up  till  midnight,  or  rise  in  the  drowsy  morn- 
ing, to  get  one  piece  more.  Do  you  not 
feel  as  if  your  money-safe  were  the  metro- 
polis of  your  affections  ?  Where  your  m-O- 
ney  is,  is  not  your  heart  there  also  ?  Were 
your  fortune  to  clap  its  wings  and  fly  aAvay, 
would  not  you  feel  as  if  your  happiness  had 
fled  away  ?     Have    not   your  very  thoughts 

*  Jcr.  xiv.  G. 


AN    EYE    TO    THE    LORD    JESUS.  65 

got  a  golden  tinge  ?  And  tracing  some  o( 
this  Sabbath's  meditations  back  to  their 
source,  would  not  you  soon  land  in  the  till, 
the  exchange,  the  counting-room  ?  Is  not 
gold  your  chiefest  joy  ?  But  have  not  flashes 
of  truth  from  time  to  time  dismayed  you  ? 
"  What  am  I  living  for  ?  For  a  make-believe 
like  this  ?  For  a  glittering  cheat  which  (in 
the  way  that  I  am  using  it)  will  be  forgotten 
in  heaven  or  felt  Hke  a  canker  in  hell  ?  How 
shall  I  wake  up  my  demented  self  from  this 
spell-dream,  and  seek  some  surer  bliss,  some 
more  enduring  joy  ?  For  grant  that  I  shall 
be  buried  in  a  coffin  of  gold,  and  comme- 
morated in  a  diamond  shrine,  Avhat  the  hap- 
pier will  it  make  the  jne  that  then  shall  be  T' 
And  even  without  these  brighter  convictions, 
without  these  momentar}^  breaks  in  the  ge- 
neral delirium  of  covctousness,  do  you  not 
feel  a  duller  dissatisfaction  occasionally  creep- 
ing over  you  and  paralyzing  your  busy  efforts  ? 
"  Well — is  this  right  ?  This  headlong  hunt 
of  fortune — is  it  the  end  for  which  my  Creator 
sent  me  into  the  world  ?  Is  it  the  highest 
end  for  which  my  immortal  self  can  live  ? 
Is  it  the  best  way  of   bestowing  that  single 


56  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

sojourn  in  this  probation-world,  which  God 
has  given  me  ?  And  what  am  I  the  better  ? 
Am  I  sure  that  I  myself  am  the  happier 
for  it  ?  Dare  I  flatter  myself  that  in  be- 
queathing so  much  money,  I  bequeath  to 
my  children  a  sure  and  certain  good — -an 
inevitable  blessing?"  And  such  intrusive 
thoughts,  whose  shadows  at  least  flit  across 
most  serious  minds,  are  very  dampening  to 
efl^ort — very  deadening  to  diligence  in  busi- 
ness. Merel}^  serving  your  friends,  in  the 
pursuit  of  fame,  merely  seeking  a  fortune, 
you  are  in  constant  danger  of  having  all 
motive  annihilated,  and  so  all  effort  para- 
lyzed- But  whatever  be  the  business  in 
hand,  from  the  veriest  trifle  up  to  the  sub- 
limest  enterprise  ;  from  binding  a  shoe-latchet 
to  preparing  a  highway  for  the  Lord  ;  if 
only  you  be  conscious  that  this  is  the  work 
which  He  gave  you  to  do,  you  can  go  on 
with  a  cheerful  serenity  and  strenuous  satis- 
faction ;  for  you  will  never  want  a  motive. 
And  it  is  just  when  other  motives  are  re- 
laxing into  languor,  that  the  compensation  we 
speak  of  comes  into  play  ;  and  the  constrain- 
ing love  of  Christ  restores  the  soul  and  keeps 


AN  EYE  TO  THE  LORD  JESUS.       67 

its  rate  of  activity  quick  and  constant  as  ever. 
The  love  of  Christ  is  an  abiding  motive,  and 
can  only  lose  its  power  where  reason  has  lost 
its  place.  No  man  ever  set  the  Lord  before 
him  and  made  it  his  supreme  concern  to 
please  his  Master  in  heaven,  and  yet  lived  to 
say,  "  What  a  fool  am  I !  What  a  wasted  hfe  is 
mine  !  What  vanity  and  vexation  has  Christ's 
service  been  !  Had  I  only  my  career  to  begin 
anew,  I  would  seek  another  master  and  a 
higher  end."  The  Lord  Jesus  ever  lives, 
and  never  changes  ;  and  therefore  the  be- 
liever's love  to  his  Saviour  never  dies.  Grow- 
ing acquaintance  may  bring  out  new  aspects 
of  his  character ;  but  it  Avill  never  disclose  a 
reason  why  the  believing  soul  should  love 
him  less  than  it  loved  at  first.  Growing 
acquaintance  will  only  divulge  new  reasons 
for  exclaiming,  "Worthy  is  the  Lamb!" 
and  fresh  motives  for  living  not  unto  our- 
selves, but  unto  him  that  loved  us  and  gave 
himself  for  us. 

2.  Love  to  Christ  is  a  motive  equal  to  all 
emergencies.  There  is  a  ruling  passion  in 
every  mind  :  and  when  every  other  consider- 


68  LIFE    IX    EARNEST. 

ation  has  lost  its  povrer,  this  ruling  passion  re- 
tains its  influence.  Deeper  than  the  love  of 
home,  deeper  than  the  love  of  kindred,  deeper 
than  the  love  of  rest  and  recreation,  deeper 
than  the  love  of  life,  is  the  love  of  Jesus.  When 
they  were  probing  among  his  shattered  ribs 
for  the  fatal  bullet,  the  French  veteran  ex- 
claimed, "  A  little  deeper,  and  you  will  find 
the  emperor."  The  deepest  affection  in  a  be- 
lieving soul  is  the  love  of  its  Saviour.  And  so, 
when  other  spells  have  lost  their  magic,  when 
no  name  of  old  endearment,  no  voice  of  on- 
waiting  tenderness,  can  disperse  the  lethargy 
of  dissolution,  the  name  that  is  above  every 
name,  pronounced  by  one  who  knows  it,  will 
kindle  its  last  animation  in  the  eye  of  death. 
And  when  other  persuasives  have  lost  their 
power  ;  when  other  loves  no  longer  constrain 
the  Christian ;  when  the  love  of  country  no 
longer  constrains  his  patriotism,  nor  the  love 
of  his  brethren  his  philanthropy,  nor  the  love 
of  home  his  fatherly  affection,  the  love  of 
Christ  will  still  constrain  his  loyalty.  There 
is  a  love  to  Jesus  which  nothing  can  de- 
stroy.    There    is  a  loyal-heartedness  which 


AN    EYE    TO    THE    LORD    JESUS.  59 

refuses  to  let  a  much-loved  Saviour  go,  even 
when  the  palsied  arm  of  affection  is  no  longer 
conscious  of  the  benignant  form  it  embraces. 
There  is  a  love  which,  amidst  the  old  and 
weary  "  feel"  of  waning  years,  renews  its 
youth,  and  amidst  outward  misery  and  in- 
ward desolation  preserves  its  immortal  root ; 
which,  even  when  the  glassy  eye  of  hunger 
has  forgot  to  sparkle,  and  the  joy  at  the 
heart  can  no  longer  montle  on  the  withered 
cheek,  still  holds  <  u,  faithful  to  Jesus,  though 
the  flesh  be  faint.  This  was  the  love  which 
made  Paul  and  Silas,  fatigued  and  famished 
as  they  were,  and  sleepless  with  pain,  sing 
praise  so  loud  tliat  their  fellow-prisoners 
heard  and  wondered.  This  was  the  love 
which  burned  in  the  Apostle's  breast,  even 
when  buffeting  the  Adriatic's  wintry  waves, 
and  made  the  work  which  at  Rome  awaited 
him,  beam  like  a  star  of  hope  through  the 
drowning  darkness  of  that  dismal  night.  This 
was  the  love  which  thawed  his  pen,  when  the 
moan  of  wintry  winds  made  him  miss  the 
cloak  he  left  at  Troas,  and  impelled  him  to 
write  to  Timothy  a  testamentary  entreaty  to 
"hold  fast"  the  truths  which  were  hastening 


60  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

himself  to  martyrdom.  Devotedness  to  Christ 
is  a  principle  which  never  dies,  and  neither 
does  the  diligence  which  springs  from  it. 

If  you  love  the  Lord  Jesus,  you  have 
every  thing.  Union  to  Jesus  is  salvation. 
Love  to  Jesus  is  religion.  Love  to  the 
Lord  Jesus  is  essential  and  vital  Christi- 
anity. It  is  the  mainspring  of  the  life  of 
God  in  the  soul  of  man.  It  is  the  all-inclu- 
sive germ,  which  involves  within  it  every 
other  grace.  It  is  the  pervasive  spirit,  with- 
out which  the  most  correct  demeanour  is  but 
dead  works,  and  the  seemliest  exertions  are 
an  elegant  futility.  Love  to  Christ  is  the 
best  incentive  to  action — the  best  antidote  to 
idolatry.  It  adorns  the  labours  which  it  ani- 
mates, and  hallows  the  friendships  which  it 
overshadows.  It  is  the  smell  of  the  ivory  ward- 
robe— the  precious  perfume  of  the  behever's 
character — the  fragrant  mystery  which  only 
lingers  round  those  souls  that  have  been 
to  a  better  chme.  Its  operation  is  most  mar- 
vellous ;  for  when  there  is  enough  of  it,  it 
makes  the  timid  bold,  and  the  slothful  dili- 
gent. It  puts  eloquence  into  the  stammering 
tongue,  and   energy  into  the  withered   arm, 


A\    EYE    TO    THE    LORD    JESUS.  Gl 

and  ingenuity  into  the  dull  lethargic  brain. 
It  takes  possession  of  the  soul,  and  a  joyous 
lustre  beams  in  languid  eyes,  and  wings  of 
new  obedience  sprout  from  lazy,  leaden  feet. 
Love  to  Christ  is  the  soul's  true  heroism, 
which  courts  gigantic  feats,  which  selects  the 
heaviest  loads  and  the  hardest  toils,  which 
glories  in  tribulations,  and  hugs  reproaches, 
and  smiles  at  death  till  the  king  of  terrors 
smiles  again.  It  is  the  aliment  which 
feeds  assurance — the  opiate  which  lulis  sus- 
picions— the  oblivious  draught  which  scat- 
ters misery  and  remembers  poverty  no  more. 
Love  to  Jesus  is  the  beauty  of  the  bv^lieving 
soul ;  it  is  the  elasticity  of  the  wilhng  steps, 
and  the  brightness  of  the  glowing  counte- 
nance. If  you  would  be  a  happy,  a  holy, 
and  a  useful  Christian,  you  must  be  an  emi- 
nently Christ-loving  disciple.  If  you  have  no 
love  to  Jesus  at  all,  then  you  are  none  of  his. 
But  if  you  have  a  Httle  love — ever  so  little — 
a  little  drop,  almost  frozen  in  the  coldness  of 
your  icy  heart — oh !  seek  more.  Look  to 
Jesus,  and  cry  for  the  Spirit  till  you  find  your 
love  increasing ;  till  you  find  it  drowning  be- 
setting sins ;  till  you  find  it  drowning  guilty 
0 


62  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

fears — rising,  till  it  touch  that  index,  and 
open  your  closed  lips — rising,  till  every  nook 
and  cranny  of  the  soul  is  filled  with  it,  and  all 
the  actions  of  life  and  relations  of  earth  are 
pervaded  by  it — rising,  till  it  swell  up  to  the* 
brim,  and,  like  the  Apostle's  love,  rush  over 
in  a  full  assurance — "Yes,  I  am  persuaded, 
that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor 
principalities,  nor  powers,  nor  things  present, 
nor  things  to  come,  nor  height,  nor  depth,  nor 
any  other  creature,  shall  be  able  to  separate 
us  from  the  love  of  God,  which  is  in  Christ 
Jesus  our  Lord." 


CHAPTER  IV. 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT. 


^^  Fervent  in  Spirit V 

The  description  of  work  which  a  man  per- 
forms wiJl  depend  very  much  on  the  master 
whom  he  serves  ;  but  the  amount  and  quality 
of  that  work  will  depend  as  much  on  the 
mood  of  mind  in  which  he  does  it.  The 
master  may  be  good,  and  the  things  which 
he  commands  may  be  good;  but  unless  the 
servant  have  an  eager  willing  mind,  little 
work  may  be  done,  and  that  little  may  not  be 
well  done.  This  is  the  glory  of  the  gospel. 
It  not  only  invites  you  to  be  the  disciples  of  a 
Saviour,  whose  requirements  are  as  worthy 
of  your  most  strenuous  obedience  as  he  him- 
self is  worthy  of  your  warmest  love  ;  but  it 
undertakes  to  give  you  the  energy  and  enter- 
prise   which   the   service   of  such   a   master 

m 


64  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

demands.  Besides  assigning  a  good  and 
honourable  work  for  your  "  business,"  and  him 
whom  principalities  and  powers  adore  for 
your  master,  the  gospel  offers  j^ou  the  zealous 
mind  which  such  a  work  requires,  and  which 
such  a  master  loves. 

But  what  is  a  fervent  spirit  ? 

1.  It  is  a  beheving  spirit.  Few  men  have 
faith.  There  are  few  to  whom  the  word  of 
God  is  sohd  ;  to  whom  "the  things  hoped  for" 
are  substantial,  or  "the  things  unseen"  evi- 
dent. There  are  few  who  regard  the  Lord 
Jesus  as  livmg  now,  or  as  taking  a  real  and 
affectionate  charge  of  his  people  here  on  earth. 
There  are  few  who  yet  expect  to  see  him, 
and  who  are  laying  their  account  with  stand- 
ing before  his  great  white  throne.  But  the 
behever  has  got  an  open  eye.  He  has  looked 
within  the  veil.  He  knows  that  the  things 
seen  are  temporal,  and  the  things  unseen  are 
eternal.  He  knows  that  the  Lord  Jesus  lives, 
and  that  though  unseen  he  is  ever  near.  He 
may  often  forget,  but  he  never  doubts  his 
promise:  "Lo!  I  am  with  you  always." 
This  assurance  of  his  ascending  Saviour, 
every  time  he  recals  it,  infuses  alacrity,  ani- 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT.  66 

mation,  earnestness.  The  faith  of  this  is 
fervour.  "Yes,  blessed  Saviour  !  art  thou 
present  now?  And  seest  thou  thy  disciple 
trifling  thus  ?  Is  the  Book  of  Remembrance 
filling-  up,  and  are  these  idle  words  and 
wasted  hours  to  be  registered  there  ?  And 
art  thou  coming  quickly  and  bringing  thy 
reward,  to  give  each  servant  as  his  work 
shall  be?  And  is  this  my  Mvork?'  Lord, 
help  mine  unbelief.  Dispel  my  drowsiness. 
Supplant  my  sloth,  and  perfect  thy  strength 
in  me." 

2.  A  fervent  spirit  is  an  afiectionate  spirit. 
It  is  one  which  cries  Abba,  Father.  It  is  full 
of  confidence  and  love.  Peter  had  a  fervent 
spirit,  but  it  Avould  be  hard  to  say  whether 
most  of  his  fervour  flowed  through  the  outlet 
of  adoration  or  activity.  You  remember  with 
what  a  burst  of  praise  his  first  epistle  begins, 
and  how  soon  he  passes  on  to  practical  mat- 
ters. "  Blessed  be  the  God  and  Father  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  which  according  to  his 
abundant  mercy,  hath  begotten  us  again  unto 
a  lively  hope  by  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
Christ  from  the  dead,  to  an  inheritance  in- 
corruptible and  undefiled,  and  that  fadeth 
6* 


66  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

not  away."  "  Wherefore,  laying  aside  all 
malice,  and  all  guile  and  hypocrisies,  and  all 
evil  speakings,  as  new-born  babes,  desire  the 
sincere  milk  of  the  word,  that  ye  may  grow 
thereby."  "Likewise,  ye  wives,  be  in  sub- 
jection to  your  own  husbands."  "  The  elders 
which  are  among  you  I  exhort,  who  am  also 
an  elder."  And  as  in  his  epistle,  so  in  his 
living  character.  His  full  heart  put  force  and 
promptitude  into  every  movement.  Is  his 
master  encompassed  by  fierce  ruffians  ?  Peter's 
ardour  flashes  in  his  ready  sword,  and  converts 
the  Galilean  boatman  into  the  soldier  instan- 
taneous. Is  there  a  rumour  of  a  resurrection 
from  Joseph's  tomb  ?  John's  nimbler  foot  dis- 
tances his  older  friend,  but  Peter's  eagerness 
outruns  the  serener  love  of  John,  and,  past  the 
gazing  disciple,  he  bolts  breathless  into  the 
vacant  sepulchre.  Is  the  risen  Saviour  on  the 
strand  ?  His  comrades  secure  the  net,  and 
turn  the  vessel's  head  for  shore  ;  but  Peter 
plunges  over  the  vessel's  side,  and,  struggling 
through  the  waves,  in  his  dripping  coat  falls 
down  at  his  Master's  feet.  Does  Jesus  say, 
"  Bring  of  the  fish  ye  have  caught  ?"  Ere  any 
one  could  anticipate  the  Avord,  Peter's  brawny 


A    FERVKNT    SPIRIT.  67 

arm  is  lugging  the  weltering  net  with  its 
glittering  spoil  ashore  ;  and  every  eager 
movement  is  answering  beforehand  the  ques- 
tion of  his  Lord,  "  Simon,  iovest  thou  me  ?" 
And  that  fervour  is  the  best,  which,  like  Peter's, 
and  as  occasion  requires,  can  ascend  in  ecstatic 
ascriptions  of  adoration  and  praise,  or  follow 
Christ  to  prison  and  to  death  ;  which  can  con- 
centrate itself  on  feats  of  heroic  devotion,  or 
distribute  itself  in  the  affectionate  assiduities 
of  a  miscellaneous  industry. 

3.  A  fervent  spirit  is  a  healthy  spirit. 
When  a  strong  spring  gushes  up  in  a  stag- 
nant pool,  it  makes  some  commotion  at  the 
first ;  and  looking  at  the  murky  stream  with 
its  flotilla  of  duckweed  tumbling  down  the 
declivity,  and  the  expatriated  newts  and  horse- 
leeches crawling  through  the  grass  ;  and  in- 
haling the  miasma  from  the  inky  runnel,  you 
may  question  whether  the  irruption  of  this 
powerful  current  has  made  matters  any  better. 
But  come  anon,  when  the  living  water  has 
floated  out  the  stagnant  elements,  and  when, 
instead  of  mephitic  mud,  skinned  over  with  a 
film  of  treacherous  verdure,  the  bright  foun- 
tain   gladdens    its    mirrored    edge   with   its 


68  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

leaping  fulness,  then  trips  away  on  its  merry- 
path,  the  benefactor  of  thirsty  beasts  and 
parched  fields.  So  the  first  manifestations  of 
the  new  and  the  spiritual  element  in  a  carnal 
mind  are  of  a  mingled  sort.  The  pellicle  of 
decency,  the  floating  duckweed  of  surface- 
seemliness,  which  once  spread  over  the  cha- 
racter, is  broken  up  ;  and  accomphshments 
and  amusing  qualities,  which  made  the  man 
very  companionable  and  agreeable,  have,  for 
the  present,  disappeared.  There  is  a  great 
breakup ;  and  it  is  the  passing  away  of  the 
old  things  which  is  at  first  more  conspicuous 
and  less  pleasing  than  the  appearance  of  the 
new.  In  these  earlier  stages  of  regenerate 
history,  the  contrition  and  self-reproach  of 
the  penitent  often  assume  the  form  of  an 
artificial  demureness  and  voluntary  humility; 
and  in  the  general  disturbance  of  those  ele- 
ments which  have  long  Iain  in  their  specious 
stagnation,  defects  of  character,  formerly 
hidden,  are  perceived  sooner  than  the  beau- 
ties of  a  holiness  scarce  yet  developed.  But 
"  Spring  up,  O  Avell !  sing  ye  unto  it."  If 
this  incursive  proces;s  go  freely  on — ^if  the 
living  water  spring  up  fast  enough  to  clear 


A    FERVKNT    SPIRIT. 


out  the  sedimentary  selfishness  of  the  natural 
mind,  with  its  reptile  inmates — if  the  in- 
flowings of  heavenly  life  be  copious  enough 
to  impart  a  truly  "  fervent  spirit" — come 
again.  Survey  that  character  when  the  love 
of  God  has  become  its  second  nature.  In 
place  of  the  mean  and  sordid  motives  which 
once  fermented  there,  view  the  simplicity 
and  godly  sincerity — the  light-welcoming 
transparency,  which  reflects  the  Sun  of 
Righteousness  above  it,  and  the  forms  of 
truth  around  it  ;  and  instead  of  the  fast- 
evaporating  scantiness  of  its  former  selfish- 
ness, follow  its  track  of  difl^usive  freshness 
through  the  green  pastures  which  it  glad- 
dens, and  beneath  those  branches  which 
gratefully  sing  over  it.  Like  a  sweet  foun- 
tain, a  fervent  spirit  is  beneficent ;  its  very 
health  is  heahng ;  its  peace  with  God  and 
joy  from  God  are  doing  constant  good  ;  the 
gospel  of  its  smihng  aspect  impresses  stran- 
gers and  comforts  saints.  And  besides  this 
unconscious  and  incidental  usefulness,  its 
active  outpourings  are  a  benefit  as  wide  as  its 
waters  run.     A  Christian  who  is  both  active 


70  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

and  fervent  is  doing  perpetual  good,  and 
good  in  the  most  benignant  way.  The  sub- 
stantial service  he  does  is  doubly  blessed  by 
the  joyful,  loving,  and  hopeful  spirit  in  which 
he  does  it ;  and  though  it  were  only  by  the 
gladness  which  skirts  its  course,  and  the 
amenities  which  bloom  wherever  it  overflows, 
beholders  might  judge  how  *'  living,"  how 
hfe-a wakening  that  water  is,  which  Jesus 
gives  to  them  that  believe  in  him. 

The  best,  the  healthiest,  is  that  calm  and 
constant  fervour  we  have  now  described  ;  but 
just  as  there  are  intermitting  springs  which 
take  long  time  to  fill,  and  then  exhaust  their 
fulness  in  a  single  overflow — and  as  there  are 
geysers  which  jet  their  vociferous  waters  high 
in  air,  and  then  are  silent  for  long  together — 
so  there  are  Christians  who  do  not  lack  fer- 
vour, but  it  comes  in  fits.  They  are  inter- 
mitting springs  ;  they  take  long  to  fill,  and 
are  emptied  in  a  single  gush.  Or  they  are 
geysers.  Some  years  ago  they  went  up  in  an 
explosion  of  zeal — a  smoking  whirlspout  of 
fervour — but  all  is  cold  and  silent  now.  The 
water  is  living,  but  the  well  is  peculiar;  it  is 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT.  Tl 

only  periodically  filkd  ;  ii  seldom  overflows. 
But  just  as  you  would  not  like  to  depend  on 
an  intermitting  fountain  for  your  cup  of  daily 
water,  nor  to  owe  the  irrigation  of  your  fields 
to  the  precarious  bounty  of  a  boiling  spring — 
as  the  well  near  which  you  pitch  your  tent  or 
build  your  house,  is  the  EHm  whose  bulging 
fulness  inntes  you  to  plunge  your  pitcher  at 
any  hour,  and  whose  deep-fed  copiousness  is 
constantly  wimpling  oft'  in  fertilizing  streams 
— so  you  may  be  happy  to  perceive  the  inci- 
dental usefulness  even  of  that  zeal  which 
comes  fitfully ;  but  you  would  select  as  the 
benefactor  of  the  church  and  as  your  own 
resort,  the  full  heart  to  which  you  never 
can  come  wrong,  and  whose  perennial  re- 
dundance bespeaks  a  secret  feeding  from 
the  river  which  makes  glad  the  city  of  our 
God. 

4.  A  fervent  spirit  is  a  happy  spirit. 
Health  is  happiness.  Peace  with  God  is  the 
Jife  of  the  soul,  and  joy  in  God  is  its  health. 
That  assured  and  elevated  believer  who  enjoys 
every  thing  in  God  and  God  in  every  thing, 
must  needs  be  fervent.     His  inward  blessed- 


73  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

ness  makes  him  bountiful,  and  to  do  good  and 
to  communicate  are  things  which,  in  his  happy 
mood  of  mind,  he  cannot  help.  Some  Chris- 
tians are  too  dejected.  They  get  under  the 
covert  of  a  peculiar  theology,  or  ensconce 
themselves  in  shadowy  caves  of  wilfulness,  or 
pertinacity,  or  unbelief ;  and  then  complain  that 
they  cannot  see  the  Sun  of  Righteousness.  He 
lightens  the  world.  Let  them  come  out  be- 
neath his  beams,  and  at  once  they  will  feel  the 
fire.  Their  shivering  faith,  which  with  them 
is  rather  the  reminiscence  of  heat  than  a  re- 
sorting to  its  unfailing  source,  will  soon  mount 
up  to  fervour.  To  look  to  Jesus  is  to  come  to 
God,  and  to  come  home  to  God  is  to  be  happy. 
An  estranged  or  suspicious  spirit  cannot  be 
fervent. 

Then  some  Christians  are  not  fervent  be- 
cause they  are  cumbered  with  so  many 
things.  They  carry  all  their  own  burdens, 
and  from  their  sympathizing  disposition  they 
have  charged  themselves  with  many  bur- 
dens of  their  brethren  also;  but  instead  of 
devolving  these  personal  and  relative  solici- 
tudes on  an  all-sufficient  Saviour,  they  carry 
the  whole  melancholv  load    themselves.     A 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT.  7B' 

fearful  or  a  fretful  spirit  cannot  b<'  fervent ; 
but  there  is  no  need  for  a  believer  in  Jesus  to 
be  troubled  or  afraid.  Let  him  deposit  all 
his  anxieties  in  that  ear  which  is  gracious 
enough  to  attend  to  the  most  trivial,  and  leave 
them  in  that  hand  \vhich  is  mighty  enough  to 
disperse  the  most  tremendous ;  and  reheved  of 
this  incubus,  his  spirit  will  acquire  an  elas- 
ticity equal  to  the  most  arduous  and  most  mul- 
tifarious toils.  Some  believers  arc  not  suf- 
ficiently fervent,  from  being  straitened  in  them- 
selves. They  do  not  open  their  souls  to  those 
felicitating  influences  with  which  a  God  of  love 
surrounds  them  on  every  side.  There  is  as 
much  comfort  in  the  Word  of  God,  and  as 
much  beauty  in  his  works,  and  as  much  kind- 
ness in  his  dispensations,  as,  admitted  into  the 
soul,  would  inundate  it  with  ecstasy.  But  many 
hearts  are  perverse ;  they  let  gloomy  thoughts 
and  bitter  fancies  flow  freely  in,  and  are  almost 
jealous  lest  a  drop  of  strong  consolation  should 
trickle  through,  on  this  deluge  of  Marah. 

It  depends  on  which  floodgate  you  open, 

whether  you  be  drowned  in  a  tide  of  joy  or 

of   sorrow.      It    depends    on   whether    your 

well-springs  are  above   or  beneath,  whether 

7 


74  LIFE    IN  EARNEST. 

your  consolation  or  your  grief  abounds. 
If  you  listen  to  what  the  Amen,  the  Faith- 
ful Witness,  is  saying,*  and  what  God  the 
Father  is  saying,!  and  what  the  Spirit  and 
the  Bride  are  saying,:]:  and  what  a  glo- 
rious universe  is  saying,§  and  what  the  gra- 
cious events  in  your  daily  history  are  saying,|| 
your  murmurings  will  subside  into  silence, 
and  your  vexing  thoughts  will  be  drowned  in 
gratitude.  Think  much  of  God's  chief  mercy, 
and  take  thankful  note  of  his  lesser  gifts. 
And  when  you  have  put  on  this  girdle  of  glad- 
ness, your  glory  will  sing  and  your  grati- 
tude will  dance. ^  Your  soul  will  be  happy, 
and  your  joy  will  find  outlets  of  adoring 
praise  and  vigorous  industry. 

5.  A  fervent  spirit  is  one  filled  with  the 
Spirit  of  God.  When  Jesus  cried,  "  If  any 
man  thirst,  let  him  come  unto  me  and  drink," 
and  promised  that  rivers  of  living  water 
should  flow  through  the  heart  of  the  behever, 

*  John  xiv — xvi.  t  Matt.  iii.  17. 

X  Rev.  xxii.  17. 

^  Ps.  viii.  xix.  civ. 

II  Ps.  cvii.    Isa.  xxxviii.  19.     Gen.  xxxv.  3. 

V  Ps.  XXX.  11,  12. 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT.  76 

«*  he  spake  of  the  Spirit,  which  they  that  be- 
heve  on  him  should  receive."  The  Holy 
Spirit  is  actually  bestowed  on  the  people  of 
Grod.  He  is  to  them  a  better  Spirit,  restrain- 
ing and  superseding  their  own.  He  is  the 
author  of  that  athletic  self-denial  and  flesh- 
conquering  fervour  of  which  they  are  conscious 
from  time  to  time.  It  is  he  who  gives  such 
dehght  in  drawing  near  to  God,  that  the  be- 
liever at  seasons  could  "  pray  and  never 
cease;"  and  it  is  he  who  gives  that  transform- 
ing affection  to  the  person  of  Christ,  and  that 
heroic  ardour  in  the  service  of  Christ,  to  which 
inactivity  is  irksome,  and  silence  oppressive. 
And  whosoever  would  enjoy  the  gentle  ma- 
nuduction  jvhich  leads  into  all  truth  and  all 
duty — ^whosoever  would  persevere  in  the  pla- 
cid discharge  of  allotted  labour,  and  maintain 
amidst  it  all  a  calm  and  thankful  walk  with 
God,  must  put  himself  at  the  disposal  of  this 
heavenly  visitant.  The  heart  is  "  dry  as 
summer's  dust"  from  which  the  Spirit  of  Grod 
departs ;  and  that  is  the  believing,  loving, 
happy,  and  energetic  heart  in  which  the  Holy 
Spirit  dwells. 

6.   A   fervent  spirit  is  a  prayerful  spirit. 


76  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

The  Holy  Spirit  is  the  New  Testament 
gift  most  absolutely  promised  in  answer  to 
prayer  ;*  and  though,  perhaps,  the  gift  whose 
bestowment  is  least  the  matter  of  a  lively 
consciousness  to  the  recipient  at  the  moment, 
the  gift  from  which,  in  the  long-run  of  life, 
the  largest  and  most  important  results  are 
evolved ;  and  the  gift  which,  in  the  retrospect 
of  eternity,  the  believer  may  find  that  he 
enjoyed  more  abundantly  and  more  constantly 
than  he  himself  ever  imagined.  As  it  is, 
there  are  times  when  the  presence  of  this 
Almighty  Comforter  is  easily  realized.  When 
the  soul  is  hfted  far  above  its  natural  sielfish- 
ness,  so  that  it  can  make  vast  sacrifices  with- 
out any  misgiving ;  when  fortified  against  its 
natural  timidity,  so  that  it  can  face  frightful 
perils  without  any  trepidation;  and  when 
invigorated  with  such  unwonted  ardour  as  to 
forget  its  natural  indolence  and  not  feel  its 
inherent  weakness,  the  soul  can  readily  un- 
derstand that  this  mighty  strengthening  in- 
wardly is  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  And 
it  is  this  persuasion  which  brings  the  believer 
strength  in  weakness.  Conscious  of  lethargy 
*  Luke  xi.  13.     John  xiv.  14,  16  ;  xvi.  24. 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT.  77 

creeping  over  him ;  alarmed  at  the  declension 
of  his  zeal,  and  the  waning  of  his  love ; 
fearful  to  what  his  present  apathy  may  grow, 
and  remembering  how  different  were  the 
days  of  old,  he  breathes  a  prayer,  at  first 
faint  and  desponding,  but  still  a  prayer: 
"  Wilt  thou  not  revive  us  again  ?  Awake,  O 
north  wind  ;  come  thou  south."  And,  whilst 
he  is  yet  speaking,  he  begins  to  revive.  As 
if  the  clear  weather  were  brightening  the 
atmosphere,  the  great  reahties  grow  distinct 
and  near.  The  things  eternal  are  seen  again, 
and  the  powers  of  the  coming  world  are  felt. 
His  soul  is  restored.  Or  a  great  work  is 
given  him  to  do,  and  his  strength  is  small. 
*♦  O  Lord,  with  thee  is  the  fountain  of  life. 
Lord,  pity  me,  for  I  am  weak."  And  the 
Lord  pities  him,  and  sends  forth  his  quicken- 
ing Spirit ;  and  the  difficulty  is  surmounted 
and  the  work  is  done  :  and,  without  so  much 
as  feeling  the  fire  and  water  which  lay  be- 
tween, he  gains  the  wealthy  pkce. 

7.  A  fervent  spirit  is  one  which  easily 
sunders  a  man  from  selfishness  and  sloth  and 
other  besetting  sins.  On  a  winter's  day  I 
have  noticed  a  row  of  cottages,  with  a  deep 


?8  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

layer  of  snow  on  their  several  roofs  ;  but,  as 
the  day  wore  on,  large  fragments  began  to 
tumble  from  the  eaves  of  this  one  and  that 
other,  till,  by  and  by,  there  was  a  simulta- 
neous avalanche,  and  the  whole  heap  shd 
over,  in  powdery  ruin,  on  the  pavement ;  and 
before  the  sun  went  down,  you  saw  each  roof 
as  clear  and  dry  as  on  a  summer's  eve.  But 
here  and  there  you  would  observe  one  with 
its  snow-mantle  unbroken,  and  a  ruff  of  stiff 
icicles  round  it.  What  made  the  difference  ? 
The  difference  was  to  be  found  within.  Some 
of  these  huts  were  empty,  or  the  lonely  inha- 
bitants cowered  over  a  scanty  fire  ;  whilst  the 
peopled  hearth  and  the  high-blazing  fagots  of 
the  rest  created  such  an  inward  warmth  that 
grim  winter  relaxed  his  earnest  gripe,  and 
the  loosened  mass  folded  off  and  tumbled 
over  on  the  miry  street.  It  is  possible  by 
some  outside  process  to  push  the  main  volume 
of  snow  from  the  frosty  roof,  or  chip  off  the 
icicles  one  by  one.  But  the}-^  will  form  again, 
and  it  needs  an  inward  heat  to  create  a  total 
thaw.  And  so,  by  sundry  processes,  you  may 
clear  off  from  a  man's  conduct  the  dead 
weight  of  conspicuous  sins ;  but  it  needs  a 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT.  79 

hidden  heat,  a  vital  w^arinth  within,  to  pro- 
duce such  a  separation  between  the  soul  and 
its  besetting  iniquities,  that  the  whole  wintry 
incubus,  the  entire  body  of  sin,  will  come 
spontaneously  away.  That  vital  warmth  is 
the  love  of  God  abundantly  shed  abroad — the 
kindly  glow  which  the  Comforter  diffuses  in 
the  soul  which  he  makes  his  home.  His 
genial  inhabitation  thaws  that  soul  and  its 
favourite  sins  asunder,  and  makes  the  indo- 
lence and  self-indulgence  and  indevotion  fall 
off  from  their  old  resting-place  on  that  dis- 
solving heart.  The  easiest  form  of  self-mor- 
tification is  a  fervent  spirit. 

8.  And  a  fervent  spirit  is  the  most  abun- 
dant source  of  an  active  life.  In  heaven 
there  is  a  perfect  activity,  because  in  heaven 
there  is  a  perfect  fervour.  They  are  all  happy 
there.  They  have  a  sufficient  end  in  all  they 
do.  There  is  no  wearying  in  their  work,  for 
there  is  no  waning  in  their  love.  The  want 
of  a  sufficient  object  would  make  any  mr.n 
i'!le.  A  friend  once  found  the  author  of  "  The 
Seasons"  in  bed  long  after  noon;  and  up- 
braiding him  for  his  indolence,  the  poet 
remarked,  that    he    just    lay    still    because, 


60  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

if  he  were  up,  he  would  have  nothing  to  do. 
But,  even  in  this  sluggish  world,  there  are 
those  whose  hearty  relish  of  their  work  and 
sense  of  its  importance  so  inspire  them,  that 
they  are  very  loath  when  slumber  constrains 
them  to  quit  it,  and  often  prevent  the  dawn- 
ing in  order  to  resume  it.  It  was  mathema- 
tical fervour  which  kept  Newton  poring  on 
his  problems  till  the  midnight  wind  swept 
over  his  papers  the  ashes  from  his  long-extin- 
guished fire.  It  was  artistic  fervour  which 
kept  Reynolds  with  the  pencil  in  his  glowing 
hand  for  thirty-six  hours  together,  evoking 
from  the  canvas  forms  of  beauty  that  seemed 
glad  to  come.  It  was  poetic  fervour  which 
sustained  Dryden  in  a  fortnight's  frenzy, 
when  composing  his  Ode  on  St.  Ceciha's  day, 
heedless  of  privations  which  he  did  not  so 
much  as  perceive.  It  was  classical  fervour 
which,  for  six  successive  months,  constrained 
the  German  scholar,  Heyne,  to  allow  himself 
no  more  than  two  nights  of  weekly  rest,  that 
he  might  complete  his  perusal  if  the  old 
Greek  authors.  And  it  was  scientific  fer- 
vour which  dragged  the  lazy  but  eloquent 
French  naturalist,  Buffon,  from  beloved  slum- 


A    FERVENT    SPIRIT.  81 

bers  to  his  still  more  beloved  studies,  for 
many  years  together.  There  is  no  depart- 
ment of  human  distinction  which  cannot  re- 
cord its  feats  of  fervour.  But  shall  science, 
with  its  corruptible  crowns,  and  the  world, 
with  its  vanities,  monopolize  this  enthusiasm  ? 
If  not,  let  each  one  consider.  What  is  the 
greatest  self-denial  to  which  a  godly  zeal  has 
prompted  me  ?  Which  is  the  largest  or  the 
greatest  work  through  which  a  holy  fervour 
has  ever  carried  me  ?* 

*  It  would  have  been  right,  had  there  been  room,  to 
mention  some  things  which  are  detrimental  or  fatal  to 
fervour  of  spirit.  1.  Guilt  on  the  conscience.  2.  Debt 
and  worldly  entanglements.  3.  Sabbaths  not  sanc- 
tified. 4.  Late  and  frequent  visiting.  5.  Indulgence 
in  frivolous  literature.  6-  Restraining  prayer.  7.  A 
wrong  theology. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    THREEFOLD    CORD. 


^'Not  slothful  in  business  ;  fervent  in  spirit ; 
serving  the  LordJ*^ 

Were  you  ever  struck  with  the  sobriety  of 
Scripture  ?  There  are  many  good  thoughts 
in  human  compositions,  and  many  hints  of 
truth  in  human  systems  ;  but  in  proportion  as 
they  are  original  or  striking,  they  border  on 
extravagance.  You  cp.nnot  follow  them  fully 
till  you  find  yourself  toppling  on  the  verge 
of  a  paradox,  or  are  obliged  to  halt  in  the 
midst  of  a  glaring  absurdity.  There  are 
many  excellent  ideas  in  the  old  philosophy, 
and  some  valuable  principles  in  the  ethics  of 
later  schools ;  but  they  all  show,  though  it 
were  in  nothing  but  their  extremeness,  their 
frail  original,  their  human  infirmity,  their 
wrong-side  bias.  And  so  is  it  with  many 
82 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  83 

religious  systems,  built  on  insulated  texts  of 
Scripture.  They  are  not  without  a  basis  of 
truth,  but  that  basis  is  partial.  The  ex- 
tremeness of  religionism  pounces  on  a  single 
text,  or  a  single  class  of  texts,  and  walls  them 
off'  from  the  rest  of  revelation,  and  cultivates 
them  exclusively, — bestows  on  them  the  irri- 
gation of  constant  study,  and  reaps  no  harvests 
except  those  which  grow  on  this  favourite  ter- 
ritory,— and  looks  on  all  the  rest  of  the  Bible 
as  a  sort  of  common ;  an  unenclosed  waste ; 
a  territory  good  for  Httle  or  nothing,  except 
a  short  occasional  excursion ;  ay,  and  per- 
haps frowns  on  another  class  of  texts  with  a 
secret  jealousy,  as  texts  which  had  better  never 
have  been  there ;  a  dangerous  group,  whose 
creeping  roots  or  wafted  thistle-down  threaten 
evil  to  the  enclosure  of  their  own  favourite  lit- 
tle system.  If  the  texts  so  treated  be  doctrinal, 
the  result  of  this  partiaHty,  this  exclusiveness, 
or  extremeness,  is  sectarianism  ;  if  the  texts 
so  treated  be  practical,  the  result  is  religious 
singularity.  But  sectarianism  of  doctrine 
and  sing-ularity  of  practice,  whatever  counte- 
nance they  get  from  single  clauses  and  de- 
tached sentences  of  Scripture,  are  contradicted 


84  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

and  condemned  the  moment  you  confront  them 
with  a  complete  Bible.  Hence  it  happens, 
that  whilst  there  never  was  a  doctrinal  or 
practical  error  which  had  not  some  text  to 
stand  upon,  there  never  was  one  which  dared 
encounter  openly  and  honestly  the  entire  Word 
of  God.  In  other  words,  there  has  seldom 
been  an  error  which  did  not  include  some  im- 
portant truth  ;  but  just  as  surely  as  it  included 
some  truth,  so  it  excluded  others.  And  just 
as  oxygen  alone  will  never  make  the  atmo- 
sphere, or  hydrogen  alone  will  never  make  the 
ocean,  or  red  beams  alone  will  never  make  the 
sun-light,  so  one  fact,  or  one  set  of  ideas,  will 
never  make  the  truth.  A  truth,  by  abiding 
alone,  becomes  to  all  intents  an  error. 

Nothing  can  be  more  diiferent  from  the 
partiality  of  man  than  the  completeness  and 
comprehensiveness  of  Scripture.  Nothing 
can  be  more  opposite  to  man's  extremeness 
than  the  sobriety  of  Scripture.  It  does  not 
deal  in  hyperbole  or  paradox  :  it  puts  forth 
the  truth,  calmly,  fully,  and  in  all  its  goodly 
proportions.  Unlike  the  systems  of  man's 
invention,  its  ethics  do  not  flutter  on  the 
solitary  wing  of  one  only  virtue,  nor  do  they 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  85 

dot  along  on  the  uneven  legs  of  a  short 
theology  and  a  long  morality.  Its  philan- 
thropy does  not  consist  in  hating  yourself, 
nor  does  its  love  to  God  require  you  to 
forget  your  brother.  Its  perfection  of  cha- 
racter is  not  pre-eminence  in  one  particular, 
nor  does  it  inculcate  any  excellence  which 
requires  the  annihilation  of  all  the  rest. 
Though  neither  a  see-saw  of  counterpoising 
virtues  and  vices,  nor  a  neutral  mixture  of 
opposing  elements,  there  is  a  balance  of  ex- 
cellence, a  blending  of  graces,  in  the  Gospel 
ideal  of  character.  It  forgets  neither  the 
man  himself,  nor  the  God  above  him,  nor 
the  world  around  him.  It  teaches  us  to  live 
godly,  but  it  does  not  forget  to  teach  us  to 
Hve  righteously  and  soberly.  It  urges  dili- 
gence in  business,  but  it  does  not  omit  to 
enjoin  fervour  of  spirit  and  devotedness  to  the 
Lord. 

I  do  not  know  that  we  can  select  a  more 
opportune  exemplification  of  these  contrary 
principles, — the  partiahty  of  human  religion 
and  the  comprehensiveness  of  scriptural  reh- 
gion, — than  the  passage  with  which  you  are 
now  so  familiar,  and  the  treatment  which  its 
8 


86  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

several  precepts  have  received  at  the  hands 
of  men.  I  think  it  may  be  very  easily  shown 
that  each  separate  clause  has  been  the  motto 
of  a  several  sect,  the  watchword  of  a  separate 
party  ; — each  right,  so  far  as  it  remembered 
that  special  clause ;  each  wrong,  so  far  as  it 
forgot  the  other  two. 

1.  First,  "Not  slothful  in  business."  There 
have  been  in  all  ages  those  who  were  very 
willing  to  sum  up  rehgion  in  discharging  the 
duties  of  their  calhng.  If  they  were  at  ser- 
vice, they  were  conscious  of  great  industry, 
and  a  real  attention  to  their  employers'  inte- 
rest. If  wives  or  mothers,  they  were  notable 
for  keeping  at  home,  and  caring  after  their 
own  concerns.  They  looked  well  to  the  ways 
of  their  household,  and  ate  not  the  bread  of 
idleness ;  and  could  the  trim  threshold  and 
each  tidy  arrangement  of  the  well-ordered 
dwelling  tell  the  full  tale  of  anxious  thoughts, 
and  early  rising,  and  worrying  bustle,  which 
have  been  expended  upon  them,  happy  the 
empire  which  had  such  prime  minister  as  rules 
this  little  realm.  If  men  of  business,  they 
feel  that  they  are  busy  men.  They  mind 
their  own  affairs,  and  do  not  interfere  in  other 


THE    THREErOLD    CORD.  87 

men's  matters.  They  are  at  it  late  and  early  ; 
the  summer's  sun  does  not  seduce  them  from 
their  dinsry  counting-room,  nor  do  the  ameni- 
ties of  literature  bewitch  them  from  the 
anxieties  of  money-making.  They  seldom 
treat  themselves  to  a  holiday,  and  what  is 
more  to  the  purpose,  they  do  not  despatch  bu- 
siness by  halves  ;  they  work  in  good  earnest. 
They  feel  as  if  the  chief  end  of  man  lay  some- 
where about  the  terminus  of  their  own  trade 
or  profession,  and  they  push  on  accordingly. 
Then  there  mingles  with  it  all  a  complacent 
feeling.  "  It  is  not  for  myself  I  thus  tug  and 
strain,  and  grow  prematurely  old  ;  it  is  for 
others.  '  He  that  provides  not  for  his  own 
house  hath  denied  the  faith,  and  is  worse 
than  an  infidel.'  'If  any  man  will  not  work, 
neither  let  him  eat.'  We  are  commanded  to 
redeem  the  time,  and  are  forbidden  to  be 
slothful  in  business."  And  if  to  this  again 
should  be  superadded  'a  certain  amount  of 
overt  and  ostensible  religion, — if  this  busy 
man  or  cumbered  housekeeper  should  withal 
read  a  chapter  daily,  and  maintain  the  regular 
form  of  family  worship,  and  the  equally  re- 
gular form  of  church-going, — above  all,  if  his 


88  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

business  should  prosper,  and  nothing  occur 
to  vex  his  conscience,  he  is  very  apt  to  feel 
"  What  lack  I  yet  ?  True,  I  pretend  to  no 
peculiar  sanctity  ;  but  I  believe  I  am  as 
honest  and  industrious  and  sober  as  those 
who  do.  I  may  not  get  into  the  .raptures 
into  which  some  try  to  work  themselves,  nor 
do  I  fuss  about  from  sermon  to  sermon  and 
from  meeting  to  meeting,  as  many  do  ;  but  I 
believe  my  respect  for  religion  is  as  real,  and 
my  intentions  as  good  as  theirs.  And  though 
I  do  not  lay  the  same  stress  on  speculative 
points  and  matters  of  faith,  no  man  can  accuse 
me  of  neglecting  the  weightier  matters  of  the 
law."  Now  the  industrious  element  in  this 
character  is  good,  but  if  this  be  the  whole  of 
it,  in  the  Bible  balance  it  will  be  found  de- 
plorably wanting.  A  man  may  be  all  that 
you  describe  yourself,  without  being  born 
again.  He  may  be  all  this,  and  his  heart 
never  have  been  made  right  with  God  ;  and 
of  all  the  work  he  has  done  so  heartily,  no- 
thing may  have  been  done  as  unto  the  Lord, 
— in  the  animation  of  that  love,  and  in  the 
singleness  of  that  loyalty,  without  which 
the  most  fagging  toil  is  but  an  earnest  self- 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  89 

idolatry.  And  he  may  be  all  this  without 
any  of  that  fervour  of  spirit  which  will  make 
a  man  happy  in  that  world,  where  the  things 
of  our  present  faith  are  the  visible  sources 
of  joy,  and  where  psalm-singing  and  the 
other  outpourings  of  ecstatic  hearts  are  the 
exercises  most  congenial. 

2.  But  then  again,  "fervent  in  spirit." 
Others  have  erred  in  subliming  the  whole 
of  Christianity  into  fervour.  They  fancy  that 
there  is  no  outlet  for  piety  except  in  emotion. 
They  forget  that  the  engine  may  be  doing 
most  work  when  none  of  the  steam  is  blowing 
ofl';  and  therefore  they  are  not  content  ex- 
cept they  yee/ a  great  deal,  and  live  in  con- 
stant excitement.  They  forget  that  the  best 
form  that  feeling  can  take  is  the  practical 
form,  the  praying,  praising,  working  form. 
^r  if  it  should  take  this  form,  their  fervour  is 
ill-directed.  It  is  not  fairly  distributed ;  they 
are  fervent  in  secret  or  in  the  sanctuary,  but 
not  fervent  in  society ;  they  are  fervent  in 
controrersies,  but  not  in  truths  conceded ; 
they  are  fervent  in  the  things  of  their  own 
denomination,  but  not  in  the  things  of  Jesus 
Christ ;  or  if  fervent  in  his  cause,  they  fix  on 
8* 


90  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

the  fields  of  labour  far  away,  and  contemn 
those  nearer  home.  Their  fervour  is  reserved 
for  hallowed  places  and  devotional  hours,  and 
does  not  pervade  their  daily  life.  They  will 
rise  from  a  prayer  in  which  they  have  ex- 
patiated on  the  glory  of  the  latter  day,  "  Thy 
kingdom  come,  thy  will  be  done  on  earth 
as  it  is  in  heaven,"  and  some  ordinary 
duty  is  awaiting  them ;  they  are  asked  to 
fulfil  some  prosaic  service,  to  do  some  such 
matter-of-fact  employment  as  angels  in  heaven 
are  apt  to  do ;  and  the  sight  of  actual  labour 
disperses  their  good  frame  in  a  moment ; 
their  praying  fervour'  is  not  a  working  fervour. 
Or  they  have  just  been  singing,  under  some 
extraordinary  afflatus,  a  hymn  about  universal 
peace  or  millennial  glor}^ ;  but  the  unopened 
letter  turns  out  to  be  a  despatch  from  some 
nefarious  correspondent,  or  the  moment  the 
worship  is  over  some  gross  negligence  or 
some  provoking  carelessness  accosts  them, 
and  the  instant  explosion  proves,  that  were 
they  living  in  the  millennium,  there  would  be 
at  least  one  exception  to  the  universal  peace. 
Or  they  have  come  back  from  some  jubilant 
missionary  meeting,  where  their  hearts  were 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  91 

really  warm,  where  they  loudly  applauded 
speeches,  and  where  their  eyes  overflowed  at 
the  recital  of  some  affecting  instance  of  libe- 
rality ;  and  they  are  hardly  safe  in  their 
homes,  when  the  ill-favoured  collector  assails 
them,  and  they  are  asked  for  the  solid  sym- 
pathy of  their  substance.  After  they  have 
given  their  tears,  to  be  asked  for  their  gold  ! 
They  feel  as  if  it  were  a  fatal  transition, 
a  most  headlong  climax,  from  delicious 
emotion  down  to  vulgar  money.  And  thus 
it  is  that  they  continue  to  let  as  much 
feeling  vanish  in  inaction,  as  much  fervour 
fly  off  in  mere  emotion,  as,  if  turned  on  in  the 
right  direction,  might  have  propelled  some 
mighty  enterprise,  or  conducted  to  a  safe  and 
joyful  conclusion  many  a  work  of  faith  and 
labour  of  love. 

3.  "Serving  the  Lord."  In  Old  Testa- 
ment times  it  was  not  unusual  for  persons  of 
eminent  piety  to  dedicate  themselves  entirely 
to  temple-service,  waiting  on  God  in  prayer 
continually  night  and  day.  Thus  Samuel  was 
dedicated  to  the  Lord  all  the  days  of  his  life  : 
so  we  presume  was  the  maid  of  Gilead,  Jeph- 
thah's  daughter  ;   and  so  was  Anna  the  pro- 


92  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

phetess,  who  departed  not  from  the  temple  the 
eighty-four  years  of  her  long  Avidowhood.  In 
seeking  this  seclusion,  they  were  practically 
carrying  out  the  Psalmist's  devout  behest, 
"  One  thing  have  I  desired  of  the  Lord,  that 
will  I  seek  after;  that  I  may  dwell  in  the 
house  of  the  Lord  all  the  days  of  my  life,  to 
behold  the  beauty  of  the  Lord  and  to  inquire 
in  his  temple."  And  a  pleasant  hfe  it  were, 
away  from  a  stormy  world  in  the  calm  pavi- 
lion of  God's  own  presence,  and  away  from 
the  tantalizing  phantoms,  vexing  cares,  and 
stunning  noise  of  dehrious  mortality,  to  see 
no  beauty  less  soul-filling  than  his  own,  and 
hear  no  voice  less  assuring  than  his  who  says, 
"My  peace  I  give  unto  yon."  But  the  gos- 
pel dispensation  is  not  the  era  of  anchorets 
and  recluses  and  temple-devotees;  or  more 
properly  speaking,  every  disciple  of  the  Sa- 
viour ought  to  be  alike  a  devotee.  He  should 
live  not  to  himself,  but  to  Him  who  loved 
him.  He  should  be  a  self-devoted,  a  dedi- 
cated man ;  a  living  sacrifice,  but  a  sacrifice 
diffusing  its  sweet  savour  in  the  scenes  of  or- 
dinary life,  and  regaling  not  heaven  alone,  but 
earth  with  its  grateful  exhalations.     He  should 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  9d 

seek  to  behold  his  Lord's  beauty  and  dwell  in 
his  Lord's  presence  all  the  days  of  his  life;^ 
but  now  that  neither  at  Jerusalem  nor  at  Sama- 
ria is  the  temple,  his  believing  heart  should  be 
the  shrine,  and  his  ascending  Saviour's  pro- 
mise, "  Lo,  I  am  with  you,"  should  be  the 
Shekinah.  Wherever  he  2:oes,  he  should 
carry  his  Lord's  presence  along  with  him, 
and  whatever  he  is  doing  he  should  be 
doing  his  Heavenly  Master's  work.  How- 
ever, this  life  of  active  devotedness  does 
not  suit  the  taste  of  many.  In  order  to  serve 
the  Lord  they  feel  that  they  must  leave  the 
Hving  world.  They  must  off  and  away  to 
some  cleft  of  the  rock,  some  lodge  of  the  far 
wilderness,  some 

"  sacred  solitude, 
"  Where  Quiet  with  Rehgion  makes  her  home." 

To  be  diHgent  in  business  they  feel  incompa- 
tible with  serving  the  Lord;  and  even  that 
more  hallowed  business  which  is  occupied 
with  ministering  to  the  bodies  and  souls  of 
men,  is  a  nide  break  in  their  retirement,  a 
jar  in  their  contemplative  joys.     They  would 


94  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

rather  be  excused  from  any  thing  which  forces 
them  into  contact  with  unwelcome  flesh  and 
blood,  and  reminds  them  of  this  selfish  world 
and  its  gross  materialism.  Their  closet  is 
more  attractive  than  the  cottage  of  poverty; 
meditations  of  "the  rest  which  remaineth"  are 
more  congenial  than  toils  in  the  work  of  the 
day ;  and  pensive  lamentations  over  the  world's 
wickedness  come  more  spontaneously  than  real 
earnest  efforts  to  make  this  bad  world  better. 
Now  it  is  impossible  to  be  too  devoted  if  that 
devotedness  make  you  correspondingly  fervent 
in  spirit  and  diligent  in  business.  You  cannot 
pray  too  much,  though  you  should  pray  with- 
out ceasing,  if  your  prayer  take  a  practical 
direction,  and  lead  you  to  do  good  without 
ceasing.  But  it  is  just  as  possible  to  run 
away  from  the  Lord's  service  by  running  into 
retirement  as  by  running  into  the  world.  In 
the  retirement  of  the  ship,  and  then  in  the 
completer  retirement  of  the  whale's  belly, 
Jonah  was  as  much  a  rebel  and  a  runaway 
as  in  the  noisy  streets  of  Joppa.  Had  he 
wished  to  "  serve  the  Lord,"  his  "  business" 
was  to  have  been  at  Nineveh.  And  it  little 
matters  whether  it  be  the  recluse  of  the  de- 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  95 

sert  who  absconds  from  his  brethren,  and 
leaves  the  sick  to  tend  themselves,  and  the 
ignorant  to  teach  themselves,  and  the  careless 
to  convert  themselves ;  or  the  recluse  of  the 
closet,  who  leaves  the  neglected  household  to 
take  care  of  itself,  the  slip-shod  children  to 
look  after  themselves,  and  the  broken  furniture 
to  mend  itself;  each  in  his  own  way  is  sloth- 
ful in  business,  under  a  self-deceiving  pretext 
that  he  is  serving  the  Lord. 

Thus  you  perceive  that  each  of  the  three 
classes,  the  mere  bustlers,  the  mere  feelers, 
and  the  mere  devotees,  by  being  right  in 
only  one  thing,  are  altogether  wrong.  These 
are  not  fancy  sketches,  nor  are  they  studies 
after  the  antique.  True,  you  may  find  the 
counterpart  of  the  first  class  in  the  correct  mo- 
rality and  heartless  formalism  of  that  worldly 
professorship,  that  "Whole  Duty  of  Man" 
Pharisaism  of  a  former  age.  And  you  may 
represent  the  second  by  that  antinomian 
fervour,  that  unproductive  zeal  which  has 
marked  some  periods  of  the  church, — 
which  possibly  marks  some  sections  still. 
And  you  will  find  the  third  exemphfied  in 
all    the  mystic    devotion   and   day-dreaming 


96  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

quietism  of  world-weary  recluses,  popish  and 
protestant,  in  every  age.  Though  all  can  quote 
one  fragment  of  this  passage,  all  are  wrong- 
by  not  being  able  to  quote  the  whole.  Those 
who  are  diligent  in  business,  but  in  that  busi- 
ness do  not  serve  the  Lord,  their  selfish  dili- 
gence is  but  a  busy  idleness,  a  hypocritical 
activity.  Their  time-bounded  and  self-revert- 
ing work  is  the  ineflectual  labour  of  the  con- 
vict who  digs  the  pit  and  fills  it  up  again, 
who  draws  water  from  the  well  and  pours 
it  back  again.  And  so  the  devotedness  which 
results  in  no  diligence  is  hke  the  planning 
of  a  house  which  is  never  built,  the  daily 
purposing  of  a  journey  which  is  never  set 
about.  The  fervour  of  spirit  which,  withal, 
is  slothful  in  business,  is  hke  the  stream 
falhng  on  the  mill-wheel,  but  the  connecting 
shaft  is  broken,  and  though  the  wheel  turns 
nimbly  round,  the  detached  machinery  stands 
still,  and  no  work  is  done ;  or  hke  the  dis- 
connected engine  and  tender,  which  bolt  away 
by  themselves,  and  leave  the  helpless  train 
still  standing  where  it  stood. 

Now  in  opposition   to  all   these    defective 
versions,  these  maimed  and  truncated  repre- 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  97 

sentations,  this  verse  delineates  the  Christian 
character  in  its  completeness,  hard-working, 
warmly-feeling-,  single-eyed,  "  not  slothful  in 
business,"  "  fervent  in  spirit,"  "  serving  the 
Lord."  And  if  you  look  at  the  Chris- 
tian philosophy  of  the  subject,  you  will  find 
that  it  is  the  single  eye  which  awakes  the 
fervent  spirit,  and  the  fervent  spirit  which 
sets  the  busy  hands  and  feet  in  willing  mo- 
tion. 

1.  It  is  an  eye  fixed  on  Jesus  which  kindles 
the  fervent  spirit.  An  unconverted  man  is 
not  happy.  There  is  a  dull  load  on  his 
spirit — a  dim  cloud  on  his  conscience — he 
scarcely  knows  what  he  would  be  at — but  he 
certainly  is  not  happy.  If  a  considerate  man, 
he  is  aware  that  there  must  be  a  joy  in  exist- 
ence which  he  has  not  yet  struck  out — a 
secret  of  more  solid  bliss  which  he  hitherto 
has  not  hit  upon.  He  is  not  at  peace  with 
God.  He  has  not  secured  an  explicit  recon- 
cihation  with  his  Creator  and  Sovereign. 
God's  frown  is  upon  him,  a  frown  as  wide  as 
is  the  sinner's  universe.  Go  where  he  may, 
he  cannot  get  out  into  the  clear  daylight  of 
a  glad  conscience  and  a  propitious  heaven. 
9 


98  LIFE    IN   EARNEST. 

And  it  is  not  till  he  finds  his  way  into  the 
Goshen  of  the  gospel,  the  sun-Ht  region  on 
which  the  beams  of  God's  countenance  still 
smile  down ;  it  is  not  till,  from  the  gross 
darkness  and  palpable  gloom  of  a  natural 
condition,  a  man  is  led  into  the  grateful  light 
and  glorious  hberty  of  the  sons  of  God :  it  is 
not  till  then  that  he  knows  the  ecstasy  of  un- 
diluted joy  and  the  perfection  of  that  peace 
which  passeth  all  understanding. 

It  is  not  till  the  spirit  of  adoption  makes 
him  a  child  of  God  that  he  thoroughly  feels 
himself  a  man ;  and  it  is  in  the  sweet  sense 
of  forgiveness,  and  in  the  transporting  assur- 
ance that  he  is  now  on  the  same  side  with 
Omnipotence,  that  he  first  breathes  freely. 
The  thrill  of  a  sudden  animation  sweeps 
through  all  his  frame;  and,  encountering  an 
unwonted  gayety  all  around  him,  he  per- 
ceives an  unwonted  energy  within  him. 
Peace  with  God  has  brought  him  power 
from  God,  and  (with  the  Lord,  he  loves,  to 
dictate)  there  is  no  work  which  he  is  loath 
to  do ;  and  with  that  Lord  upon  his  side, 
none  which  he  cannot  hope  to  do.  The  con- 
vict-labour and  hireling-tasks  of  the  prisoner 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  99 

and  bondsman  are  exchanged  for  the  free- 
will offerings  and  affectionate  services  of  a 
son  and  a  disciple.  Reconciled  to  God,  he  is 
reconciled  to  every  thing  which  comes  from 
God  ;  and  full  of  the  love  of  Christ,  he  courts 
every  thing  which  he  can  do  for  Christ. 
"  Come,  labour,  for  I  rather  love  thee  now. 
Come,  hard  work  and  long  work,  I  am  in  a 
mood  for  you  now.  Come,  trials  and  crosses, 
for  I  can  carry  you  now.  Come,  death,  for  I 
am  read}'-  for  thee  now." 

His  relation  to  Christ  has  put  him  in  a 
new  relation  to  every  thing  else ;  and  the 
same  fountain  which  has  Avashed  the  stain 
from  his  conscience  having  washed  the 
scales  from  his  eyes,  an  inundation  of  light 
and  of  beauty  burst  in  from  the  creation 
around  him,  which  hitherto  was  to  him  as 
much  an  unknown  universe  as  its  Creator 
was  the  unknown  God ;  and  the  boundless 
inflowings  of  peaceful  images,  and  happy 
impressions,  and  strong  consolations,  dilate 
his  soul  with  an  elasticity,  an  enterprise 
and  courage  as  new  as  they  are  divine. 
He  has  found  a  Saviour,  and  his  soul  is 
happy.     The  Lord  Jesus  is  his  friend ;  and 


100  LIFE    IN    EARNEST, 

his  spirit,  once  so  frigid,  is  become  a  fervent 
spirit.  His  new  views  have  made  him  a  new 
man. 

2.  The  fervent  spirit  creates  the  indus- 
trious hfe.  Sulky  labour  and  the  labour  of 
sorrow  are  Httle  worth.  Whatever  a  man 
does  with  a  guilty  feeling  he  is  apt  to  do 
wrong ;  and  whatever  he  does  with  a  melan- 
choly feeling  he  is  likely  to  do  by  halves. 
Look  at  that  little  boy  sitting  down  to  his 
hated  lesson  after  a  burst  of  passion.  Do 
you  notice  how  long  the  same  page  hes  open 
before  the  pouting  student,  and  how  solemnly 
he  watches  the  blue-bottle  raging  round  the 
room  and  bouncing  against  the  window  ? 
Look  at  his  blurred  copy-book,  its  trembling 
strokes  and  blotted  loops,  a  memento  of  this 
angry  morning.  And  the  sum  upon  the 
slate,  only  here  and  there  a  figure  right,  an 
emblem  of  his  rebeUious  mind,  all  at  sixes  and 
sevens  with  itself.  It  is  guilt  that  makes  him 
a  trifler.  It  is  guilt  that  makes  him  blunder. 
Guilt  makes  him  wretched  ;  and  therefore  all 
he  does  is  wrong. 

But,  sometimes,  grief  disables  or  disinclines 
for  exertion   as   much   as  guilt.     You   may 


THE    THREEFOLD    CORD.  101 

remember  times  when  such  a  sorrow  possessed 
you,  that  you  not  only  forgot  to  eat  your  daily 
bread,  but  had  no  heart  to  do  your  daily  work. 
You  did  not  care  to  set  your  house  in  order ; 
for  some  stunning  intelligence  or  fearful  fore- 
boding had  paralyzed  all  your  energy.  You 
did  not  care  to  hear  your  children's  tasks  ;  for 
the  shadows  of  a  sick-room  had  diffused  a  look 
of  orphanage  on  them  and  on  every  thing. 
And  the  more  delightsome  the  recreation  once 
had  been,  the  more  congenial  the  labour,  so 
much  the  deeper  was  the  funeral  dye  it  had 
now  assumed,  and  the  more  did  your  heart 
revolt  from  it.  Sorrow  makes  the  eyes  heavy, 
even  when  they  cannot  sleep  ;  and,  for  ineffi- 
ciency, next  to  the  blundering  work  of  a  guilty 
conscience,  is  the  dull  work  of  a  weary  or 
wounded  spirit.  If  you  could  only  shed  tran- 
quiUity  over  the  conscience,  and  infuse  joy  into 
the  soul,  you  would  do  more  to  make  the  man 
a  thorough  worker  than  if  you  could  lend  him 
the  force  of  Hercules,  or  the  hundred  arms  of 
Briareus.  Now,  the  gospel  freely  admitted 
makes  the  man  happy.  It  gives  him  peace 
tvilh  God  and  makes  him  happy  in  God.  Its 
strong  consolation  neutralizes  the  sting  of 
9* 


102  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

reluctant  labour  and  the  curse  of  penal  toil. 
Its  advent  of  heavenly  energy  takes  the  lan- 
guor out  of  hfe,  and  much  of  its  inherent 
indolence  out  of  lazy  human  nature.  It  chases 
spectres  from  the  fancy  and  lions  from  the 
street.  It  gives  industry  a  noble  look  which 
selfish  drudgery  never  wore ;  and  from  the 
moment  that  a  man  begins  to  do  his  work  for 
his  Saviour's  sake,  he  feels  that  the  most 
ordinary  employments  are  full  of  sweetness 
and  dignity  ;  and  that  the  most  difficult  are 
not  impossible.  "  Through  Christ  strengthen- 
ing me  I  can  do  all  things."  Even  in  the 
aflfairs  of  ordinary  life,  the  best — the  most 
beautiful  and  effective  work  which  a  man  can 
do  is  full-hearted  work  ;  the  ingenious,  conclu- 
sive, tasteful  work  which  quits  the  masterly 
hands  or  the  invigorated  mind  of  him  whose 
heart  is  glad.  And  if  any  one  of  you,  my 
friends,  is  weary  with  his  work ;  if  dissatis- 
faction with  yourself,  or  sorrow  of  any  kind, 
disheartens  you  ;  if,  at  any  time,  you  feel  the 
dull  paralysis  of  conscious  sin,  or  the  depress- 
ing influence  of  vexing  thoughts,  look  to 
Jesus  and  be  happy.  Be  happy,  and  your 
joyful  work  will  prosper  well. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

A  WORD    TO  EACH    AND  TO  ALL CONCLUSION. 


"  Not  slothful  in  business;  fervent  in  Spirit; 
serving  the  Lord.'^ 

Christian  industry  is  just  the  outlet  of  a 
fervent  spirit,  a  Christ-devoted  heart.  The 
industry  which  is  not  fervent  is  not  Christian, 
and  on  the  other  hand,  the  love  which  does 
not  come  forth  in  action,  the  fervour  which 
does  not  lead  to  diligence,  will  soon  die  down. 
He  who  has  an  eye  to  Christ  in  all  he  does, 
and  whose  spirit  is  full  of  that  energy,  that 
love  to  his  work  and  his  brethren  and  his 
Master  in  heaven,  which  the  Holy  Spirit 
gives,  will  not  soon  be  weary  in  well-doing. 

Many  occupy  the  humble  station  of  servants, 
and  of  these,  some  are  in  families  where  there 
is  no  fear  of  God,  and  some  of  them  serve  em- 
ployers who  take  no  interest  in  them ;  who, 
however  hard  their  toil,  and  however  well  they 
do  their  work,  never  thank  them  nor  notice 

103 


104  LIFE    IN   EARNEST. 

their  exertions.  This  is  discouraging.  But 
we  may  say  to  such — before  you  entered  that 
family,  had  you  not  entered  the  service  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  ?  And  when  you  came  to  this 
new  place  you  surely  did  not  leave  this  higher 
and  nobler  service.  Very  true,  the  individual 
from  whom  you  receive  your  immediate  orders 
may  be  very  unreasonable,  and  exceedingly 
unamiable,  and  the  thanks  you  get  may  be 
sorry  remuneration  for  your  conscientious  in- 
dustry. But  have  you  not  a  Master  in  Heaven, 
whose  eye  is  always  upon  you,  who  takes  in- 
terested note  of  all  you  do,  and  who,  whatever 
you  do  in  secret  for  his  sake,  will  reward  you 
openly  ?  You  do  not  mean  to  say  that  all  your 
end  in  working  is  to  get  so  much  wages,  with 
a  kind  word  or  a  look  of  approval  now  and  then. 
If  you  carry  the  spirit  of  discipieship  into  your 
every-day  duties,  you  will  find  that  there  is  a 
way  to  make  the  meanest  occupation  honour- 
able, and  the  most  irksome  employment  easy. 
Work,  which  you  do  for  the  Lord's  sake, 
will  never  be  wearisome,  and  however  httle 
man  may  notice  or  acknowledge  it,  your 
labour  in  the  Lord  will  never  be  vain.  And  I 
know  not  if  there  be  any  department  of  life 


A    WORD    TO    ALL.  105 

where  there  is  more  abundant  room  for  a  truly- 
Christian  ambition  than  the  calling  which  you 
occupy. 

Whether  like  Eliezer  of  Damascus,  you 
serve  a  Father  of  the  Faithful,  or  like  Joseph 
and  the  Israelitish  maid,  you  are  in  the  house- 
hold of  a  pagan  or  a  worldling  ;  you  have  sin- 
gular opportunities  for  adorning  the  doctrine  of 
your  God  and  Saviour.  Good  man  as  Abraham 
was,  and  good  man  as  Eliezer  was,  there  was 
once  a  time  when  Abraham,  in  a  tone  of  evi- 
dent disappointment,  said,  "  Behold,  to  me  thou 
hast  given  no  seed,  and  lo,  one  born  in  my 
house  is  mine  heir."  But  so  completely  had 
the  consistent  kindness  and  fidelity  of  Eliezer 
won  the  affection  of  his  chief,  that,  at  the  last, 
Abraham  could  scarcely  have  wished  a  better 
heir  than  his  servant,  or  Eliezer  found  a  more 
indulgent  father  than  his  master. 

Joseph  had  no  motive  for  serving  Pharaoh, 
except  that  anxiety  to  fulfil  an  important  office 
well,  and  that  hearty  love  of  labour  which  dis- 
tinguish men  of  a  healthy  mind  and  con- 
scientious spirit.  But  such  a  zealous  charge 
did  he  take  of  Pharaoh's  interests,  so  intelli- 
gently  and   sleeplessly   did    his    eye    travel 


106  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

through  the  realm,  that  Egypt  wore  another 
aspect  under  Joseph's  rule,  and  its  revenues 
became  as  rich  as  a  provident  and  benignant 
administration  could  make  them. 

The  little  maid  of  Israel  was  a  captive,  and 
if  the  joy  of  the  Lord  had  not  been  her  strength, 
she  would  have  had  no  spirit  to  work.  She 
would  have  pined  after  her  home  among  the 
hills  of  Samaria,  and  when  she  thought  of  the 
pleasant  cottage  from  which  fierce  ruffians  had 
torn  her  away,  and  named  over  to  herself,  one 
by  one,  the  playfellows  whom  she  would  never 
see  again,  she  would  have  broken  her  young 
heart  and  sat  down  in  sulky  silence,  or  perhaps 
have  died.  But  she  loved  the  Lord  God  of 
Israel ;  and  as  he  had  sent  her  to  Damascus 
and  into  the  house  of  a  heathen  lady,  she 
made  up  her  mind  and  set  to  work  right 
earnestly,  and  soon  began  to  take  a  real  interest 
in  her  new  abode.  She  loved  her  mistress, 
and  was  sorry  for  the  deplorable  sufferings  of 
her  afflicted  lord,  and  suggested  the  visit  to 
Elisha  which  resulted  in  his  wondrous  cure. 
And  both  Joseph  and  the  little  maid,  by 
serving  the  Lord  with  a  fervent  spirit,  not 
only  made  their  own  life  pass  pleasantly  in 


A    WORD    TO    ALL.  107 

a  foreign  land,  but  they  made  a  great  impres- 
sion on  those  around  them.  Joseph's  God 
was  magnified  in  the  eyes  of  Pharaoh,  and  the 
little  maid  soon  saw  Naaman  a  worshipper  of 
the  true  Jehovah. 

And  you  who  are  in  the  service  of  others, 
seek  to  serve  the  Lord.  Perhaps  hke  Joseph 
and  the  little  maid  you  are  far  from  home. 
Perhaps  like  them  you  are  doing  work  for 
those  in  whom  you  had  no  interest  formerly, 
and  who  even  now  have  not  the  fear  of  God 
before  them.  But  your  Lord  paramount  is  the 
Lord  Jesus  himself;  the  real  Master  who  has 
sent  you  here  and  given  you  this  uphill  work 
to  do  is  Christ ;  and  if  you  only  set  about  it 
for  his  sake,  with  a  happy,  interested,  resolute 
mind,  your  work  will  grow  every  day  easier ; 
your  conscience  will  sing;  the  light  of  the 
Lord's  presence  will  gild  the  dim  passages  and 
stranger-looking  chambers  of  your  place  of 
sojourn  ;  your  character  will  ere  long  com- 
mend itself,  and  better  still,  may  commend 
your  Master  in  heaven.  "For  he  that  in 
these  things  serveth  Christ  is  acceptable  to 
God,  and  approved  of  men." 


108  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

3.  Some  of  us  are  scholars  either  re- 
ceiving the  education  which  fits  for  ordinary 
hfe,  or  which  may  quahfy  us  for  some  par- 
ticular profession.  Here  too  we  have  need 
of  industry.  I  hope  you  love  learning  for  its 
own  sake ;  I  hope  you  love  it  still  more  for 
the  Lord's  sake.  The  more  things  you  know, 
and  the  more  things  you  can  do,  the  more 
respected,  and  consequently,  the  more  influ- 
ential and  useful  will  you  hereafter  be.  If 
you  grow  up  in  ignorance,  few  will  care 
for  your  company.  People  will  be  laughing 
at  your  mistakes  and  your  blunders.  And 
even  if  you  should  be  wishful  to  do  good, 
you  will  scarcely  know  how  to  set  about  it. 
The  usefulness  and  happiness  of  your  future 
life  depend  very  much  on  the  amount  of  sohd 
learning  and  graceful  accomphshments,  and 
above  all,  on  the  extent  of  Bible  knowledge 
which  you  presently  acquire,  and  if  you  be 
only  wilhng  you  may  acquire  as  much  as  ever 
you  please.  "  Nothing  is  denied  to  well- 
directed  dihgence."  Long  ago,  a  httle  boy 
was  entered  at  Harrow  School,  in  England, 
He  was  put  into  a  class  beyond  his  years,  and 


A    WORD    TO    ALL.  100 

where  all  the  scholars  had  the  advantage  of 
previous  instruction,  denied  to  him.  His  master 
chid  him  for  his  dulness,  and  all  his  own  efforts 
could  not  raise  him  from  the  lowest  place  on 
the  form.  But,  nothing  daunted,  he  procured 
the  grammars  and  other  elementary  books 
which  his  class-fellows  had  gone  through  in 
previous  terms.  He  devoted  the  hours  of 
play?  and  not  a  few  of  the  hours  of  sleep,  to 
the  mastering  of  these  ;  till  in  a  few  weeks  he 
gradually  began  to  rise,  and  it  was  not  long 
before  he  shot  far  a-head  of  all  his  companions, 
and  became  not  only  leader  of  that  division,  but 
the  pride  of  Harrow.  That  boy,  whose  career 
began  with  this  fit  of  energetic  apphcation, 
lived  to  be  the  greatest  oriental  scholar  of  mo- 
dern Europe,  and  most  of  you  have  heard  his 
name — It  was  Sir  William  Jones. 

God  denies  nothing  in  the  way  of  learning 
to  well-directed  diligence.  It  is  possible  that 
you  may  be  rather  depressed  than  stimulated 
when  asked  to  contemplate  some  famous  name 
in  literature  or  science.  When  you  see  the 
lofty  pinnacle  of  attainment  on  which  that 
name  is  now  reposing,  you  feel  as  if  it  had 
been  created  there  rather  than  had  travelled 
10 


110  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

thither.  No  such  thing.  The  most  illustrious 
in  the  annals  of  philosophy  once  knew  no 
more  of  it  than  you  now  do.  And  how  did 
he  arrive  at  his  peerless  proficiency  ?  By  dint 
of  diligence,  by  downright  pains-taking. 

When  Newton  was  asked  how  he  came  by 
those  discoveries  which  looked  like  divination 
or  intuitions  of  a  higher  intelhgence  rather 
than  the  results  of  mere  research,  he  declared 
that  he  could  not  otherwise  account  for  them 
unless  it  were  that  he  could  pay  longer  atten- 
tion to  the  subject  than  most  men  cared  to  do. 
In  other  words,  it  was  by  dihgence  in  his 
business  that  he  became  the  most  renowned 
of  British  sages. 

The  discovery  of  gravitation,  the  grand 
secret  of  the  universe,  was  not  whispered  in 
his  ear  by  any  oracle.  It  did  not  drop  into 
his  idle  lap,  a  windfall  from  the  clouds.  But 
he  reached  it  by  self-denying  toil,  by  mid- 
night study,  by  the  large  command  of  accurate 
science,  and  by  bending  all  his  powers  of 
mind  in  the  one  direction,  and  keeping  them 
thus  bent. 

And  whatever  may  be  the  subject  of  your 
purs'.iit,  if  3^011  have  any  natural  aptitude  for 


A    WORD    TO    ALL.  Ill 

it  at  all,  there  is  no  limit  to  your  proficiency 
except  the  limits  of  your  own  pains-taking. 
There  is  no  wishing-cap  which  will  bring  you 
knoAvledge  from  the  east  or  west.  It  is  not 
likely  to  visit  you  in  a  morning  dream,  nor  will 
it  drop  through  your  study  roof  into  your  elbow 
chair.  It  is  not  a  lucky  visiter  which  will  aliglu 
on  your  loitering  path  during  some  twilight, 
like  Minerva's  owl,  and  create  you  an  orator, 
an  artist,  or  a  scholar  on  the  spot.  It  is  a  point 
of  excellence  which  you  must  make  np  your 
mind  that  it  is  worth  your  while  attaining;  and 
trudge  on  steadily  towards  it,  and  not  count 
that  day's  work  hard,  nor  that  night-watching 
long,  which  advances  you  one  step  towards  it, 
or  brings  its  welcoming  beacon  one  bright  hope 
nearer. 

3.  Some  of  us  are  teachers.  It  is  much 
to  be  lamented  that  there  are  so  feA\'-  enthusi- 
asts in  this  honourable  and  important  work. 
Many  who  are  engaged  in  it  regard  it  as  a 
bondage,  and  sigh  for  the  day  which  shali 
finally  release  them  from  its  drudgery  and 
din.  They  have  never  felt  that  theirs  is  a 
high  calling,  nor  do  they  ever  enter  the 
school-room  with  the  inspiring  consciousness, 


112  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

that  they  go  as  missionaries  and  pastors  there. 
They  undervalue  their  scholars.  Instead  of 
regarding  them  as  all  that  now  exists  of  a 
generation  as  important  as  our  own ;  instead 
of  recognising  in  their  present  dispositions 
the  mischief  or  beneficence  which  must  tell 
on  wide  neighbourhoods  ere  a  few  short  years 
are  run  ;  instead  of  training  up  immortal 
spirits  and  expansive  minds  for  usefulness 
now  and  glory  afterward,  many  teachers  have 
never  seen  their  pupils  in  any  other  light 
than  as  so  many  rows  of  turbulent  rebels,  a 
rabble  of  necessary  torments,  a  roomfuU  of 
that  mighty  plague  with  which  the  Nile  of 
our  noisy  humanity  is  all  croaking  and  jump- 
ing over. 

Andmany  undervalue  themselves.  Instead  of 
recollecting  their  glorious  vocation,  and  eyeing 
the  cloud  of  teacher-witnesses  with  whom  they 
are  encompassed;  instead  of  a  high-souled 
zeal  for  their  profession,  as  that  which  should 
form  the  plastic  mind  after  the  finest  models  of 
human  attainment  and  scriptural  excellence, 
many  regard  their  office  as  so  menial  that 
they  have  always  the  feeling  as  if  them- 
selves were  pedants.     To  prescribe  the  task, 


A    WORD    TO    ALL.  113 

to  hear  the  lesson,  to  administer  monotonous 
praise  and  blame,  is  the  listless  round  of 
their  official  doings.  But  there  are  few 
fields  of  brighter  promise  than  the  calling 
of  a  teacher.  If  he  give  himself  wholly  to 
it,  if  he  set  before  him  the  highest  object 
of  all  tuition,  the  bringing  souls  to  Christ; 
if  he  can  form  a  real  affection  for  his  scholars, 
and  maintain  a  parental  anxiety  for  their 
proficiency  and  their  principles  ;  if  he  has 
wisdom  enough  to  understand  them,  and 
kindness  enough  to  sympathize  with  them; 
if  he  has  sufficient  love  for  learning  to  have 
no  distaste  for  lessons,  he  will  be  sure  to 
inspire  a  zeal  for  study  into  the  minds  of 
many,  he  will  win  the  love  of  all  except 
the  very  few  whose  hearts  are  deaf-born, 
and  in  a  short  time  the  best  features  of 
his  own  character  will  be  multiplying  in 
spheres  far-sundered,  in  the  kindred  per- 
sons of  grateful  pupils.  Should  he  live 
long  enough,  they  will  praise  him  in  the 
gate  of  public  life,  or  cheer  his  declining  days 
in  the  homes  which  he  taught  them  to  make 
happy.  Or  should  he  die  soon  enough,  the 
rest  from  his  labours  will  ever  and  anon  be 
10^ 


114 


LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 


heightened  by  the  arrival  of  another  and 
another  of  the  children  whom  God  hath  given 
him. 

But  without  descending  to  more  minute 
particulars,  let  me  remind  all  who  are  mem- 
bers of  the  church  that  they  have  a  special 
"  business"  as  the  professed  disciples  of  Jesus 
Christ.  In  the  day  when  Christ  said  to  you, 
"Arise,  follow  me,"  he  called  you  to  a  life 
like  his  own,  a  life  of  industry  and  self- 
denial,  and  continual  doing  good.  You  are 
a  consistent  Christian  in  proportion  as  you 
resemble  him  whose  fervent  spirit  poured 
out  not  more  in  his  midnight  prayers  than 
in  his  daily  deeds  of  mercy,  and  who,  whether 
he  disputed  with  the  doctors  in  the  Temple, 
or  conversed  Avith  the  ignorant  stranger  at  the 
well,  or  fed  the  five  thousand  with  miraculous 
loaves,  or  summoned  Lazarus  from  the  tomb, 
was  still  about  his  Father's  "  business." 

They  little  understand  the  Christian  life, 
who  fancy  that  a  slothful  or  languid  profes- 
sion will  secure  an  abundant  entrance  into  the 
heavenly  kingdom.  If  the  believer's  progress 
from  the  cross  to  the  crown  be,  as  it  is  again 
and  again  represented,  a  race,  a  wresthng,  a 


A    WORD    TO    ALL.  115 

warfare,  a  fight,  a  continual  watching,  and  a 
constant  violence,  there  is  good  reason  for  the 
exhortations,  "  give  diligence  to  make  your 
calling  and  election  sure.  We  desire  that 
every  one  of  you  do  show  diligence  to  the  full 
assurance  of  hope  unto  the  end ;  that  ye  be 
not  slothful^  but  followers  of  them  who  through 
faith  and  patience  inherit  the  promises. 
Wherefore,  brethren,  seeing  that  you  look  for 
such  things,  be  diligent  that  you  may  be  found 
of  him  in  peace,  without  spot  and  blameless." 
It  needs  dihgence  to  keep  the  conscience 
clean.  "  Herein  do  I  exercise  myself,  to  have 
always  a  conscience  void  of  offence  toward 
God  and  toward  men."  It  needs  dihgence 
to  keep  up  a  happy  hopefulness  of  spirit. 
"Gird  up  the  loins  of  your  mind,  be  sober, 
and  hope  to  the  end."  It  needs  dihgence  to 
maintain  a  serene  and  strenuous  orthodoxy. 
"Watch  ye  ;  stand  fast  in  the  faith  ;  quit  you 
like  men  ;  be  strong."  It  needs  diligence  to 
maintain  a  blameless  life.  "Ye  have  not  yet 
resisted  unto  blood,  striving  against  sin."  It 
needs  dihgence  to  lead  a  life  conspicuously 
useful  and  God-glorifying.  "  Seeing  we  are 
compassed  about  with  so    great   a  cloud  of 


116  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

witnesses,  (as  Abel,  and  Enoch,  and  Noah 
and  Abraham,  and  Moses,)  let  us  lay  aside 
every  weight,  and  the  sin  which  doth  so 
easily  beset  us,  and  let  us  run  with  patience 
the  race  that  is  set  before  us,  looking  unto 
Jesus."  And  it  needs  diligence  to  attain  a 
joyful  welcome  from  Jesus  and  a  full  reward. 
"  And  besides  this,  giving  all  diligence,  add 
to  your  faith,  virtue  (fortitude);  and  to  for- 
titude, knowledge ;  and  to  knowledge,  tem- 
perance ;  and  to  temperance,  patience ;  and 
to  patience,  godliness  ;  and  to  godliness,  bro- 
therly kindness  ;  and  to  brotherly-kindness, 
charity.  Wherefore  the  rather,  brethren,  give 
dihgence  to  make  your  calling  and  election 
sure  ;  for  if  ye  do  these  things  (fortitude,  &c.) 
ye  shall  never  fall :  for  so  an  entrance  shall 
be  ministered  unto  you  abundantly  into  the 
everlasting  kingdom  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ."  "And  I  heard  a  voice  from 
heaven  saying  unto  me,  Write,  Blessed  are  the 
dead  which  die  in  the  Lord  from  henceforth : 
yea,  saith  the  Spirit,  that  they  may  rest  from 
their  labours,  and  their  works  do  follow  them." 
"Let  us  labour,  therefore,  to  enter  irito  that  rest."* 

*  2  Pet.  i.  5—7,  10,  11.  Rev.  xiv.  13.  Heb.  iv.  11. 


A    WORD    TO    ALL.  IIT 

To  labour  in  the  word  and  doctrine  is  the 
business  of  one  ;  to  feed  the  flock  of  God  and 
rule  the  Church  of  Christ  is  the  business  of 
others ;  to  "  serve  tables,"  to  care  for  and 
comfort  the  poor,  and  see  that  all  things  be 
done  decently  and  in  order,  is  the  business  of 
yet  others  ;  to  teach  the  young  and  instruct 
the  ignorant  is  the  business  of  some  ;  and  to 
train  up  their  households  in  the  nurture  and 
admonition  of  the  Lord  is  the  business  of 
others ;  to  obey  their  parents  and  to  grow  in 
wisdom — in  favour  with  God  and  man — is  the 
business  of  many  ;  and  to  do  work  for  others, 
with  a  willing  hand  and  a  single  eye,  is  the 
business  of  many  more.  The  work  of  the 
day  needs  diligence ;  much  more  does  the 
work  of  eternity.  It  needs  fervent  diligence 
to  be  constantly  serving  our  fellows  ;  and  it 
needs  no  less  diligence  to  be  directly  serving 
Christ.  To  tend  the  sick,  to  visit  the  widows 
and  fatherless  in  their  affliction,  to  frequent 
the  abodes  of  insulated  wretchedness  or  con- 
gregated depravity,  to  set  on  foot  schemes  of 
Christian  benevolence  and  still  more  to  keep 
them  going — all  this  needs  diligence.  To 
put  earnestness  into  !?9cret    prayer;  to  offer 


118  LIFE    IN   EARNEST. 

petitions  so  emphatic  and  express,  that  they 
are  remembered  afterwards,  and  the  answer 
watched  for  and  expected  ;  to  commune  with 
one's  own  heart,  so  as  to  attain  some  real  self- 
acquaintance  ;  to  get  into  that  humble,  con- 
trite, confessing  frame,  where  the  soul  feels 
it  sweet  to  lie  beneath  the  cross,  and 

"A  debtor  to  mercy  alone, 
Of  covenant  mercy  to  sing;" 

to  Stir  up  one's  soul  to  a  thankful  praising 
pitch ;  to  beat  down  murmuring  thoughts 
and  drive  vexing  thoughts  away  ;  to  feel 
assurance  regarding  the  foundations  of  the 
truth,  and  clear  views  of  the  truth  itself; 
to  have  a  prompt  and  secure  command  of 
scripture ;  to  possess  a  large  acquaintance 
witli  the  great  salvation,  and  a  minute  ac- 
quaintance with  all  the  details  of  Christian 
duty  ; — all  this  needs  no  less  diligence  on 
our  part,  because  God  must  give  it  or  we 
shall  never  show  it.  To  put  life  into  fa- 
mily worship  ;  to  make  it  more  than  a  du- 
teous routine  ;  to  make  its  brief  ej)isode  of 
praise  and  prayer  and  Bible-reading  a  re- 
freshful ordinance,  and  influential  on  the  day  ; 
to  give  a  salutary  direction  to  social  inter- 


A    WORD    TO    AXL.  119 

course,  and  season  with  timely  salt  the  con- 
versation of  the  friendly  circle  ;  to  drive  that 
"torpid  ass,"  the  body,  to  scenes  of  duty 
difficult  and  long  adjourned  ;  to  make  a  real 
business  of  pubhc  worship  ;  to  scowl  away  all 
pretexts  for  forsaking-  the  solemn  assembly  ; 
to  spirit  the  reluctant  flesh  into  a  punctual 
arrival  at  the  house  of  prayer,  and  then  to  stir 
up  the  soul  to  a  cordial  participation  in  all  its 
services  ;  to  accompany  with  alert  and  affec- 
tionate eyes  the  reading  of  God's  word,  and 
listen  with  wakeful  ear  to  the  exposition  and 
application  of  its  lively  oracles ;  to  contribute 
a  tuneful  voice  and  a  singing  heart  to  our  new 
testament  offering  of  praise,  and  to  put  the 
whole  stress  of  an  intelligent  and  sympathizing 
and  believing  earnestness  into  the  supplica- 
tions of  the  sanctuary,  so  that  each  petition 
shall  ascend  to  the  throne  of  grace  with  the 
deliberate  signature  of  our  Amen — all  this 
requires  a  diligence,  none  the  less  because 
unless  God  work  it  in  us,  we  shall  never 
of  ourselves  muster  up  sufficient  fervour  thus 
to  serve  the  Lord. 

Dear   Christian   readers,    consider  what  I 
say.     There  is   little    time  to   apply  it ;  but 


120  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

you  have  received  from  this  passage  pf  Holy- 
Scripture  some  hints  of  important  truth — ap- 
ply them  for  yourselves.  As  reasons  why 
we  desire  to  see  the  church  more  industrious 
and  not  less  fervent  and  unworldly  than  the 
church  has  usually  been,  and  as  motives  why 
each  right-hearted  man  among  us  should  this 
day  start  afresh  on  a  career  of  busy  devoted- 
ness  and  fervent  industry,  let  me  remind  you, 

1.  Herein  is  the  Father  glorified,  that  ye 
bear  much  fruit. 

2.  Herein  will  you  truly  resemble,  and  in 
measure  re-exhibit  the  character  of  your 
blessed  Lord  and  Master. 

3.  Hereby  will  yourselves  be  made  far 
happier. 

4.  Hereby  will  the  world  be  the  better  for 
your  sojourn  in  it. 

5.  Hereby  will  the  sadness  of  your  de- 
parture be  exceedingly  alleviated. 

6.  And  hereby  will  your  everlasting  joy  be 
unspeakably  enhanced. 

Forbearing  to  dwell  on  these  difi^erent  con- 
siderations, let  me  revert  for  a  httle  to  the 
latter  two. 

A  life  of  diligence  and  holy  fervour  pre- 


CONCLUSION.  121 

pares  the  believer  for  a  peaceful  depar- 
ture. ''  Father,  I  have  finished  the  work 
which  thou  gavest  me  to  do;  and  now  I 
come  to  thee."  It  was  with  unspeakable  sa- 
tisfaction that  the  Saviour  corUemplated  his 
return  to  the  Father's  bosom ;  and  the  rea- 
son was,  because  he  knew  so  well  that  he 
had  finished  his  Father's  business.  He  could 
look  back  on  the  weary  days  and  sleepless 
nights  of  his  ministry,  on  the  long  years  of 
his  incarnation,  and  he  saw  that  there  was  no 
righteousness  which  he  had  not  fulfilled,  no 
precept  of  the  holy  law  which  he  had  not 
magnified.  His  memory  could  not  recal  an 
idle  word  or  a  wasted  hour;  and  even  from 
the  solemn  twilight  of  Gethsemane  his  eye 
could  trace  serenely  back  the  whole  expanse 
of  his  earthly  history,  and  see  not  one  word 
which  he  would  wish  to  recal,  not  one  act 
which  he  could  desire  to  alter;  no  sermon 
which,  if  he  had  to  preach  it  over  again,  he 
would  make  more  plain  or  more  importunate ; 
no  miracle  which,  if  it  had  to  be  performed 
afresh,  he  would  do  in  a  more  impressive  or 
effectual  manner.  He  knew  that  there  was  no 
11 


133  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

omission,  no  defect,  and  though  the  whole 
were  to  be  done  anew,  he  felt  that  the  words 
could  not  be  more  gracious,  nor  the  works 
more  wonderful  than  they  had  actually  been. 
"  Father,  I  have  glorified  thee  on  earth.  I 
have  finished  the  work  which  thou  gavest  me 
to  do ;  and  now  I  come  to  thee." 

The  Lord  Jesus  was  the  first  and  the  last 
who  ever  was  able  to  say  this ;  but  through 
his  strength  made  perfect  in  their  weakness, 
some  have  made  a  nearer  approach  to  this 
blessedness  than  their  more  remiss  and  indo- 
lent brethren.  It  was  the  grief  of  the  pagan 
emperor  Titus,  when  a  day  transpired  in 
which  he  had  learned  no  knowledge  or  done 
no  good,  "  I  have  lost  a  day."     And 

"  'Tis  a  mournful  story 
Thus  in  the  ear  of  pensive  eve  to  tell 
Of  morning's  firm  resolves  the  vanish'd  glory, 

Hope's  honey  left  within  the  with'ring  bell, 
And  plants  of  mercy  dead,  that  might  have  bloom' d 
so  well." 

But  it  is  a  far  more  mournful  story  when  the 


CONCLUSION.  123 

eve  of  life  arrives,  to  be  constrained  to  sigh, 
"  I  have  lost  a  lifetime."  "  God  gave  me 
one  lifetime,  and  it  was  once  in  my  power  to 
spend  it  as  Aquila  and  Priscilla  spent  their's, 
as  Paul  spent  his,  as  Phebe  spent  her's.  But 
now,  that  only  life  is  closing,  and  wo  is  me  ! 
how  have  I  bestowed  it  ?  In  making  pin- 
cushions and  playing  the  piano ;  in  paying 
morning  calls  and  evening  visits."  "  And 
/?— I  have  spent  it  in  reading  newspapers 
and  novels,  and  dancing  and  singing  songs, 
and  telling  diverting  stories."  "  And  /  have 
spent  it  in  drinking  and  smoking,  in  games 
of  cards  and  bilhards,  in  frequenting  taverns 
and  theatres,  in  reading  coarse  tales  and  books 
of  blasphemy."  Yes  ;  and  though  you  should 
not  need  to  look  back  on  a  hfe  thus  sinfully 
spent,  it  will  be  sad  enough  to  review  a  life 
let  idly  slip.  To  think  that  by  a  right  start- 
ing and  a  persevering  continuance  in  well- 
doing, it  was  once  in  your  power  to  have 
proved  the  large  and  permanent  benefactor 
of  your  generation — to  think  that  had  you 
only  begun  with  the  Lord  and  held  on  in 
fervour  of  spirit,  you  might  by  this  time  have 


124  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

finished  works  which  would  make  many  bless 
your  memory,  and  planted  seeds  of  which  hun- 
dreds would  reap  the  pleasant  fruits  when 
yourself  were  in  the  clay ;  and  then  to  remem- 
ber that  once  on  a  time  you  had  it  in  contem- 
plation, it  was  all  planned  out  and  resolved 
upon  and  day-dreamed  over  and  over,  but 
never  resolutely  gone  about — how  dreary  it 
will  make  your  death-bed,  if  capable  of  de- 
liberate reflection  then !  How  disconsolate  it 
will  render  the  retrospective  evening  of  your 
days,  should  you  reach  old  age  !  And  how 
diflerent  it  will  make  your  exit  from  his, 
who,  looking  back  on  his  eventful  career, 
could  say,  "  I  am  now  ready  to  be  offered, 
and  the  time  of  my  departure  is  at  hand.  I 
have  fought  a  good  fight,  I  have  finished 
my  course,  I  have  kept  the  faith.  Hence- 
forth there  is  laid  up  for  me  a  crown  of  right- 
eousness, which  the  Lord,  the  righteous  judge, 
shall  give  me  at  that  day." 

A  life  of  Christian  diligence  is  followed 
by  an  abundant  entrance  and  a  full  reward. 
There  are  two  principles  deep-seated  in  our 
nature.      Philosophy   has   got   no   name   for 


CONCLUSION.  125 

them,  but  the  Bible  has  an  eye  to  each  of 
them,  and  the  gospel  speaks  to  bolh  of  them. 
The  possessions  which  we  chiefly  prize  are 
either  those  which  we  have  earned  by  our 
own  industry,  or  gifts  we  have  got  from  those 
we  truly  love. 

Perhaps  there  is  some  little  shde  in  your 
desk,  some  secret  drawer  in  your  cabinet, 
which  you  do  not  often  open ; — but  when  on 
a  quiet  holiday  you  pull  it  gently  out  and 
look  leisurely  at  it,  your  eye  fills  with  tears. 
You  read  the  date  on  the  faded  book-marker 
with  a  pensive  smile,  or  you  press  the  little 
picture  to  your  hps  and  drop  upon  your 
knees,  to  pray  for  him  whose  image  that 
httle  picture  is.  But  a  hard-visaged  stranger 
peering  over  your  shoulder  might  marvel 
what  all  this  emotion  meant ;  for  he  would  not 
give  even  a  few  shillings  for  the  whole  collec- 
tion, and  would  think  it  more  like  the  thing 
to  be  affected  by  the  bunch  of  bank-notes  and 
bills  and  government-securities  in  the  adja- 
cent locker. 

And  why  do  you  prize  it  so  ?  That  pic- 
ture was  a  keep-sake  from  your  brother 
11* 


1JJ6  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

when  he  crossed  the  wide  ocean  ten  sum- 
mers since; — that  broidered  ribbon  is  the 
only  rehc  of  the  sister's  Jove,  who  made  you 
many  a  like  remembrance,  but  whose  moul- 
dering fingers  will  make  no  more.  Love 
lingers  in  these  relics,  and  that  is  the  reason 
why,  when  you  stuff  the  bank-notes  in  your 
pocket,  you  clasp  these  trifles  to  your  heart. 

Far  more,  if  the  gift  or  the  bequest  be  one 
of  vast  intrinsic  value.  The  estate,  the  house, 
the  lands  which  a  fatherly  kinsman  or  a  dear 
friend  conveyed  to  you — you  prize  them  infi- 
nitely more  than  if  they  had  come  to  you  in 
the  course  of  nature  or  by  the  laws  of  ordinary 
succession.  You  delight  to  show  people  over 
these  grounds,  and  when  they  ask  how  long 
they  have  been  in  your  family,  your  voice 
falters  when  you  tell  how  they  came  to  be 
yours.  Sometimes  when  you  look  over  the 
pastures  and  corn-fields,  the  water  trickles  from 
your  eye ;  for  you  feel  that  you  are  looking  not 
at  vulgar  roods  and  common  enclosures,  but 
are  gazing  on  acres  of  affection,  on  an  expanse 
of  unaccountable  kindness.  You  commemo- 
rate the  unusual  gift  by  the  giver's  name.  By 
some  adjective   of  gratitude   you   connect  it 


CONCLUSION.  127 

with  his  dear  memory  ;  and  much  as  you 
may  value  it  for  its  intrinsic  worth,  it  is  more 
precious  still  for  the  beloved  donor's  sake. 

Then  next  to  the  possessions  round  which 
there  hovers  some  symbol  of  living  affection 
or  departed  kindness,  we  prize  those  posses- 
sions in  which  we  recognise  the  fruits  of  our 
own  dihgence,  the  purchase  of  our  own  pains- 
taking. Next  to  the  keepsakes  of  friend- 
ship, we  delight  in  the  rewards  of  personal 
industry.  What  a  bright  coin  was  that  first 
dollar  which  your  own  diligence  ever  earned ! 
How  sohd  and  weighty  did  it  feel !  How  fair 
did  the  imiage  and  superscription  shine  on  its 
fresh-minted  face,  and  how  endless  did  its 
capabihties  appear !  Was  there  any  thing 
which  that  wonderful  coin  could  not  ac^on^.- 
plish,  any  object  of  desire  which  it  could  not 
purchase  ?  And  wherefore  such  overweening 
affection  for  that  one  piece,  for  had  you  not 
possessed  from  time  to  time  pocket-money  of 
your  own  before  ?  Yes — but  it  came  too 
easily  ;  it  wanted  the  pleasant  zest  of  indus- 
try ;  it  did  not  bring  into  your  bosom,  as  this 
one  does,  a  whole  freight  of  happy  recollec- 
tions, frugal  hours,  and  self-denying  labours, 


128  LIFE    IN  EARNEST. 

condensed  into  one  solid  equivalent,  one  tan- 
gible memento. 

What  are  the  books  in  your  library  which 
you  chiefly  prize?  Next  to  the  gift-bible 
which  solemnized  the  first  birth-day  when 
you  could  read  it ;  next  to  the  book  which 
your  dying  friend  lifted  from  his  pillow,  and, 
with  your  name  tremulously  inscribed,  handed 
you  on  your  last  visit,  when  he  had  strength 
to  do  it ;  are  they  not  the  books  which  re- 
warded your  blushing  proficiency  at  the  vil-- 
lage  school,  or  commemorated  your  nightly 
labours  in  the  first  and  happiest  years  of  col- 
lege Hfe,  or  those  which  your  long-hoarded 
savings  first  enabled  you  to  purchase  ?  Why 
do  you  look  with  a  kindlier  eye  on  that  juve- 
nile literature  than  on  the  long  rows  of  glit- 
tering learning  and  august  philosophy  which 
fill  your  crowded  shelves  ?  Why,  but  be- 
cause there  is  something  of  a  pleasant  per- 
sonal peculiar  to  them.  The  fight  of  early 
days  and  industrious  hours  still  floats  around 
them.  They  are  the  sunny  sepulchre  in 
which  much  of  your  former  self  hes  pleasantly 
embalmed,  ready  to  start  into  a  mellower  hfe 
the  moment  memory  bids  it. 


CONCLUSION.  129 

Or  why — to  take  the  case  already  supposed, 
the  opulent  possessor  of  estates,  which  the 
love  of  another  gave  him — why  is  it  that  in 
the  midst  of  luxuries  and  accommodations  as 
abundant  as  wealth  can  purchase  or  inge- 
nuity suggest :  why  is  it  that  fruit  from  trees 
of  his  own  planting,  or  from  a  garden  of  his 
own  tending,  tastes  so  sweet  ?  Why  is  it  that 
the  rustic  chair  of  his  own  contriving,  or  the 
telescope  of  his  own  constructing,  so  far  sur- 
passes any  which  the  craftsman  can  send 
him  ?  Why,  the  reason  is,  those  apples  have 
an  aroma  of  industry,  a  smack  of  self-requit- 
ing dihgence  peculiar  to  themselves.  That 
rustic  seat  is  lined  with  self-complacent  labour, 
and  the  pleasant  consciousness  of  having  made 
that  telescope  himself  has  so  sharpened  the 
maker's  eye  as  greatly  to  augment  its  magni- 
fying power.  God  has  so  made  the  mind  of 
man,  that  a  peculiar  deliciousness  resides  in 
the  fruits  of  personal  industry. 

I  repeat,  that  the  possessions  which  we 
chiefly  prize — those  of  which  the  heart  keeps 
the  most  tender  yet  tenacious  hold — are  not 
the  windfalls  of  fortune,  nor  the  heir-looms  of 
regular  succession,  but  the  gifts  of  affection 


130  LIFE    IN    EARNEST. 

and  the  fruits  of  pains-taking ;  those  in  which 
something  of  our-self,  or  a  dearer  than  our- 
self,  still  lives,  and  speaks,  and  feels. 

Now  in  regard  to  the  supreme  possession, 
the  inheritance  of  heaven,  the  God  of  Love 
has  consulted  both  of  those  deep-seated  prin- 
ciples of  the  human  soul.  The  heaven  itself, 
the  passport  through  its  gates,  and  the  right 
to  its  joys  are  the  purchase  and  the  gift  of 
another.  Nor  is  it  to  the  believer  the  least 
enhancing  element  in  its  priceless  possession, 
that  it  is  entirely  the  donation  and  bequest  of 
his  dearest  friend.  Looking  forward  to  the 
pearly  gates  and  golden  streets  of  the  celestial 
city,  its  love-built  mansions  and  its  life-water- 
ed paradise,  the  believer  in  Jesus  delights  to 
remember  that  they  are  purely  the  purchase, 
and  as  purely  the  gift  of  Immanuel.  To  think 
that  he  shall  yet  have  his  happy  home  on  that 
Mount  Zion;  that  with  feet  no  longer  sin- 
defiled  he  shall  tread  its  radiant  pavement 
and  stand  on  its  glassy  sea ;  that  with  fingers 
no  longer  awkward  he  shall  tell  the  harps  of 
heaven  what  once  he  was  and  who  made  him 
what  he  is ;  that  with  a  voice  no  longer 
trembling  he  shall  transmit  along  the  echoes 


CONCLUSION.  131 

of  eternity  the  song  of  Moses  and  the  Lamb ; 
to  think  that  his  shall  yet  be  a  brow  on  which 
the  drops  of  toil  will  never  burst,  and  an  eye 
which  tears  will  never  dim  ;  that  he  himself 
shall  wear  a  form  that  years  shall  never  bend, 
and  a  countenance  which  grief  can  never 
mar;  that  his  shall  yet  be  a  character  on 
which  the  stains  of  time  will  leave  no  trace, 
and  his  a  conscience  pure  enough  to  reflect 
the  full  image  of  him  who  sits  upon  the 
throne — the  thought  of  all  this  is  amazement, 
ecstasy.  But  there  is  one  thought  more 
which  puts  the  crown  upon  this  blessedness 
— the  cUmax  on  this  joy  : 

"  These  glorious  hopes  we  owe 
To  Jesus'  dying  love." 

Heaven  is  doubly  dear,  as  the  heritage 
purchased  for  him  by  his  divine  Redeemer ; 
and  all  its  glory  is  so  heightened  and  so- 
lemnized, when  he  connects  it  with  that 
adorable  Friend  who  acquired  it  for  him  and 
conveys  it  to  him,  that  though  another  heaven 
were  in  his  offer,  that  other  he  would  not  ac- 
cept. That  heaven  to  which  Immanuel  is  the 
living  way,— on  whose   earthward   entrance 


132  LIFE   IN   EARNEST. 

atoning  blood  is  sprinkled,  on  whose  many- 
mansions  and  amaranth  crowns  are  the  sym- 
bols which  connect  them  with  Calvary,  and 
amidst  all  whose  countless  joys,  the  river  of 
deepest  pleasure  is  the  love  of  Jesus, — this  is 
the  only  heaven  to  which  the  believer  expects 
an  entrance,  and  is  the  one  of  which  his  in- 
tensest  longings  say,  "Would  God  that  I 
were  there !" 

But  even  in  this  purchased  possession  there 
are  ingredients  of  delight  of  an  origin  more 
personal  to  the  believer  himself, — details  of 
special  blessedness,  for  the  germ  of  which  he 
must  go  back  to  his  own  earthly  history  ;  and 
just  as  the  sweetest  surprisals  here  below 
are  those  in  which  some  effort  of  benevolence, 
long  by-gone,  reverts  upon  you  in  its  happy 
results — when  you  meet  a  stranger,  and  are 
charmed  with  his  Christian  intelligence  and 
spiritual  congeniality,  and  lo  !  it  turns  out 
that  his  religious  history  dates  from  a  casual 
conversation  with  yourself  in  the  guest-cham- 
ber or  the  public  conveyance  ;  or  when  you 
take  refuge  from  the  storm  in  a  wayside  cot- 
tage, and  surveying  with  eager  interest  its 
arranjrements  of  unwonted  comfort  and  taste- 


CONCLUSION.  133 

fulness,  or  listening  to  the  Bible  lesson  of  its 
little  children  fresh  from  school,  mysterious 
hints  of  some  similar  yet  different  scene  steal 
in  upon  your  memory,  till  you  begin  to  think, 
"  I  have  surely  been  here  before  ;"  and  anon 
the  full  truth  flashes  out;  you  have  been  there 
before,  when  it  was  a  very  different  scene — 
when  a  drunken  husband  and  ragged  children 
and  broken  furniture  aroused  your  desponding 
commiseration ;  but  the  tract  which  you  that 
day  left  has  introduced  sobriety,  and  a  Sab- 
bath, and  a  family  Bible  into  that  abject  home, 
and  made  it  what  your  grateful  eyes  now 
see  ; — so  the  sweetest  surprisals  of  eternity 
will  be  similar  resurrections  of  the  works  of 
time. 

When  the  disciple  has  forgotten  the  labour 
of  love,  he  will  be  reminded  of  it  in  the  rich 
reward ;  and  though  he  never  thought  any 
more  of  the  cup  of  cold  water  which  he  gave, 
or  the  word  in  season  which  he  spake  in 
Jesus'  name — though  he  made  no  memoran- 
dum of  the  visits  of  mercy  which  he  paid,  or 
the  asylums  which  he  founded  for  the  orphan 
and  the  outcast — it  seems  that  they  are  regis- 
tered in  the  Book  of  Remembrance,  and  will  all 
13 


134  LIFE    IN   EARNEST. 

be  read  by  their  happy  author  in  the  reviving 
hght  of  glory.* 

To  find  the  marvellous  results  which  have 
accrued  from  feeble  means — to  encounter 
higher  in  salvation  than  yourself  those  of 
whose  salvation  you  scarcely  ever  hoped  to 
hear,  and  learn  that  an  entreaty  or  prayer,  or 
forgotten  effort  of  your  own  had  a  divine 
bearing  on  the  joyful  consummation — to  find 
the  prosperous  fruit  already  growing  on  the 
shores  of  eternity,  from  seeds  which  you 
scattered  on  the  streams  of  time — with  what 
discoveries  of  unexpected  delight  it  will  varie- 
gate the  joys  of  the  purchased  possession, 
and  with  what  accessions  of  adoration  and 
praise  it  will  augment  the  exceeding  weight 
of  glory !  Strive  to  obtain  an  abundant  en- 
trance and  a  full  reward.  Seek  to  be  so 
useful  that  the  world  will  miss  you  when 
away  ;  or  whether  this  world  miss  you  or  not, 
that  in  a  better  world  there  may  be  many  to 
welcome  you  as  you  enter  it,  and  many  to 
follow  you  when  you  have  long  been  there. 
And  above  all,  so  live  for  Christ,  so  travail  in 

*  Dan.  xii.  3.    Matt.  xxv.  34—40.    Matt.  x.  42. 


CONCLUSION.  135 

his  service,  that  when  you  fall  asleep,  a  voice 
may  be  heard  from  heaven,  saying,  "  Blessed 
are  the  dead  which  die  in  the  Lord  :  yea, 
saith  the  Spirit,  that  they  may  rest  from  their 
LABOURS,  and  their  works  do  follow  them." 


THE   END. 


